Among the collected letters of Patrick White, the sole Australian to be awarded the Nobel Prize in literature, is a 1977 note to the editorial director of the Viking Press. “There’s an Australian writer at last who I think has it,” White wrote. “His name is David Malouf, his origins mostly Lebanese, part London-Jewish. He was born and grew up in Queensland. He is a poet, who wrote a kind of autobiographical novel called ‘Johnno,’ which to me is one of the best books about Australia. He has now written another very imaginative novel based on Ovid in exile. It will not be the big money-spinner, but it is literature and perhaps Viking can still afford that.”
more from the LA Times here.