"The Weekend Australian" has published a large profile of Australian author David Malouf as his new novel, Ransom, is about to be released.
"I want books to unfold as if they were dreams and even to have the logic of dreams," Malouf says, sitting at his kitchen table in inner-suburban Sydney one recent afternoon. He rarely gives interviews, but his first novel in several years is about to appear and his publishers, presumably, have persuaded him. "I deliberately don't plan where the writing is going so that things can happen with the same unpredictability, with the same process of association rather than logical unfolding. That provides something for the reader as well: the reader has something like the same sense of discovery that the writer does. "As a writer, discipline for me is to learn more and more how to fall quickly into that state."The publisher's page has a release date of 1 April 2009, and the following description of the book:
With learning worn lightly and in his own lyrical language, David Malouf revisits Homer's ILIAD. Focusing on the unbreakable bonds between men - Priam and Hector, Patroclus and Achilles, Priam and the cart-driver hired to retrieve Hector's body. Pride, grief, brutality, love and neighbourliness are explored. The minute you finish this novel you will want to return to the beginning and start all over again.
