Great World [Hardcover]

David Malouf (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1993

For the two men in this novel, war was supposed to be a testing ground. But it proved to be an ordeal of a different kind. Spanning 70 years of Australian life, from Sydney's Cross to the backwaters of the Hawkesbury River, this is a novel of lost innocence and witness.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Malouf's is a name not widely known here, although he is regarded as a major writer in his native Australia and has a growing reputation in Britain. The Great World is a smashing performance, a novel of intense perception and formidable power. It follows two men who first come to know each other when, after the collapse of Singapore, they are war prisoners of the Japanese, working like coolies to build a railroad in remote Thailand. Digger Kean is a quiet, thoughtful man with a phenomenal memory, content with his quiet existence at a tiny rural river crossing named for his family. Vic Curran is impulsive, instinctive, aggressive, a man who rose from a desperately poor childhood to become a wheeler-dealer in the Sydney money markets. Their relationship is an uneasy one, but central to both lives. Malouf traces those lives and their interrelationship from the Depression, through the apocalyptic horror of the war and then to the expansive peace years that follow and make Curran wealthy. The author moves smoothly back and forth in time, creating in the process vivid characters observed with keen understanding: Ma and Pa Warrender, who adopt orphaned Vic and become his surrogate family; Iris, the sister-in-law of a buddy killed by the Japanese, whom Digger first knows through her letters and later comes to cherish in a lifetime of weekly visits; Digger's mother, who in an unforgettable scene walks away from her uncomplaining, patient life into madness. For someone who writes so acutely of men in war--and some of the wartime passages are as eloquent and truly horrific as any ever penned--Malouf has an astonishing, almost Lawrentian grasp of the subtle currents of feeling between the sexes. His prose is never less than quietly sure, and when he rises to a major scene--as when Vic heals Digger's disease-ravaged legs in a Thai river, or Digger has a vision of the sweet sanctity of everyday civilian life--he rises to poetic heights. The Great World is that rarity, a novel of genuinely epic scope.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

Will American readers be interested in slices of Australian life over the last 70 years? Will they be enthralled by two Aussies who meet in a Japanese POW camp? Will they be at all taken by a novel of an old war while a new one rages? Probably not, though they should be. Malouf, who is being touted as the successor to the great Patrick White, has written a wonderfully constructed, beautifully phrased novel that transcends its geography and its time to give us the dramatic interactions between human beings and history. The plot hangs on the friendship between Digger Keen and Vic Curran, representatives of the working class who are altered by war and their country's development. The writing is powerful, engaging, dynamic. This should not be missed.
- Vincent D. Balitas, Allentown Coll., Center Valley, Pa.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: San Val (September 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 141771896X
• ISBN-13: 978-1417718962
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #11,154,474 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great story and great storytelling, May 25, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Great World: A novel (Paperback)

David Malouf is a masterful storyteller. His multiple award winning novel, "The Great World", is a coming-of-age tale of lost innocence of two lads (Digger and Vic) whose separate childhoods in the outbacks of Australia and their shared experiences as interns in the Second World War helped shape the course of their future together. It's difficult to characterise the relationship these two men have with each other. To call it friendship would be to simultaneously overstate and understate the position. They were never really buddies - hell, Digger didn't even like Vic - but fate had different ideas and kept intervening at critical moments to draw them together whenever their lives took separate turns after the war. Of the two, Vic is the more colourful and vividly drawn character. The early rejection of his natural father - a weak and sorry piece of low life - and his obsessive need for self determination provide more than a clue to our impression of him as a steely hearted "user" (of Digger, his adoptive family, etc) of family and friends for his own ends. The sad irony is that Vic is as much a victim as the people he uses and only his wife, Ellie, is privileged and burdened by knowledge of the truth when she catches a glimpse of his real self in the dark. More disappointment follows when his son Greg turns out to be a sloganeering liberal. Digger, on the other hand, is arguably the novel's moral centre but as a character, he seems curiously underwritten. His part is that of the moon to Vic's sun. He possesses a vulnerability that is simply incandescent. Even Jenny, his retarded sister, sees through Vic, but Digger remains trusting and accepting to the end. But "The Great World" is far from a two man show. There are loads more characters that Malouf creates who are truly memorable. Mac, their war time mate, may have been given limited script space, but his spirit lives on long after he has been written out. It's also a wonderfully uplifting moment for the reader when Pa and Ma, Vic's adoptive parents, find their true vocation in life as poet and businesswoman, respectively. Malouf is a classic writer in the best of the old fashioned tradition. He knows how to tell a story and keep you enthralled from start to finish. His prose is warm, accessible and true. Reading "The Great World" may not change your life but it will show you what it is to be human. A great novel. I highly recommend it.

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Takes His Time, February 7, 2001

By 

taking a rest - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Great World: A novel (Paperback)

Mr. Malouf is a gifted communicator, creator, and conjuror. I am even tempted to use literary alchemist for he does not just take words and arrange them, he selects words, assembles them with care and thought, and truly creates writing that is altogether new. This holds true whether he is dealing in pure fiction, or fiction that is historically based. The books that result from his efforts are almost uniformly excellent, and at there best incorporate the various types of writing he has such a wonderful grasp of. For Mr. Malouf is a Novelist, a Poet, and a Librettist, each an accomplishment, when combined extraordinary.

I have one of his novels left to read, and having come this far into his work I recommend them all without condition. "The Great World", is different from the previous works I have read and commented upon, and this is due primarily to its length. I once read that a movie is an epic if it takes its time. If that is the criterion here, then this work certainly qualifies. If you have read any of his shorter works, and have been amazed with the scope he can cover, the illusion of time and length he conveys, imagine it tripled or quadrupled, and you will get an idea of the panorama of lifetimes this work relates.

To narrow the comments on this work to an observation or two is unfair. There are just so much and so many players that are important. However to focus on Vic and Digger and the lifetime's experiences they share, takes a good deal of the book into account. Vic is at once an enigma and a cliché. This is a man who will continue to removes cookies after being caught in the act, and then risk his life to save that of the friend whose jar he had plundered. He is an exploiter of human friendship a businessman of questionable ethics he is faithful, faithless. He is a montage of all that is meant to be human. Superficially he is in control, beneath the veneer, he is simply human wreckage.

Digger is the friend you would like to have, a man that Vic feels he justifiably targets and exploits, but I never felt that Digger was the person who was deluding himself. Even "simple" Jenny always knew what Vic was. Vic was accommodated by Digger when others who would meet him instantly were put off. He was his silent apologist, his passive defender, not because he believed Vic to be good, merely in need of pity.

There are many events in the book that are important, but one is critical. It is one of those moments when a person finds out what they are or are not capable of. As a solitary experience it can be painful, when it involves another it can be shattering. Vic has this experience while a POW with Digger and others, and it governs his life forever. His time as a POW finalizes who Vic is, while others integrate it as an episode of their life.

Mr. Malouf has written a remarkable study of men in captivity, men who spend the majority of the War as prisoners without the opportunity to prove themselves, defend their Country, or earn the right to say, "I was there". This study of human nature alone makes the book worthwhile, but as I mentioned it is one of many human explorations Mr. Malouf takes the reader upon.

For anyone who enjoys excellent writing, Mr. Malouf will greatly enhance your reading experiences, even with topics you might not normally tend to choose. He is certainly an Author who will never disappoint you.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An indelible impression, April 24, 2006

By 

Aussie observer (Sydney, Austraila) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Great World: A novel (Paperback)

I read this bbok while in my early twenties and naive to so many of the horrors of war. It had a profound impact on me. Ten years later, after spending the first two years of her life in India, my daughter was gravely ill. My recollections of this book and the Cholera symptoms that Malouf described in his characters... prompted me to confront the Dr's with my fear. I was correct, she had Cholera. The vivid descriptions of what those men must have suffered during those times had never left me, and Malouf's clarity and attention to detail in his writing saved my daughters life. A life changing read for me!