The Vivisector

A complex novel by one of Australia's best-known writer. Hurtle Duffield is a painter who dissects the weaknesses of all those who form part of his long life. All are the victims of his art, with their weaknesses exposed, including the deformity of his sister and the illusions of his mistress. With the advent of an egocentric adolescent, however, he experiences a different, deeper, more troubled emotion. About the Author

Patrick White was born in England in 1912. He was taken to Australia (where his father owned a sheep farm) when he was six months old, but educated in England, at Cheltenham College and King’s College, Cambridge. He settled in London, where he wrote several unpublished novels, then served in the RAF during the Second World War. He returned after the war to Australia, where he became the most considerable figure in modern Australian literature before being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1973. His position as a man of letters was controversial, provoked by his unpredictable public statements and his belief that it is eccentric individuals who offer the only hope of salvation. Technically brilliant, he is one modern novelist to whom the oft-abused epithet ‘visionary’ can safely be applied. He died in September 1990.