Nicolas Rothwell Nicolas Rothwell i(A12001 works by)
Born: Established: New York (City), New York (State),
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United States of America (USA),
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Americas,
;
Gender: Male
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BiographyHistory

Educated in Switzerland, London and Oxford, Rothwell comes from a long line of Australian journalists and has worked on newspapers in Sydney, Singapore, London and New York. He spent time in the 80s and 90s as a foreign correspondent for the Australian in the Americas, the Pacific and Western and Eastern Europe, where he covered the revolutionary upheavals. When Rothwell returned to Australia in 1996, he based himself in Darwin, and spent much time in outback towns such as Mount Isa, Katherine and Alice Springs. He has also been the Australian's Middle East correspondent.

Most Referenced Works

Awards for Works

y separately published work icon Red Heaven Melbourne : Text Publishing , 2021 21543852 2021 single work novel

'A monumental and gripping story, Red Heaven is a glamorous tale of a child with two fascinating and domineering guardians, inspired by the author's own childhood.

'Red Heaven is the story of a child's journey to adulthood, his loss of those he loves and his fixing of them in memory. It begins in the late 1960s in Switzerland, as the unnamed narrator's ideas about life are being shaped by two compelling rival influences, the architects of his youth.

'These are his so-called aunts-imperious, strong-willed, ambitious-both determined to make the boy into their own heir, a believer in their values. In self-contained episodes, each set in an alpine grand hotel, we see one aunt and then the other seek to educate their protege by imparting their experiences.

'Serghiana, the 'red princess', is the daughter of a Soviet general, a producer of films and worshipper of art, a true believer. Ady, a former actress and singer, is a dilettante and cynic, Viennese, married to a great conductor- in her eyes, life is nothing but an affair of surfaces; truth and beauty are mere illusions.

'The aunts and all those in their orbit are exiles, without a home, at the mercy of outside political events. They strive to see what lies beyond the chance events and intersections of their lives. Their allegiances shift. Their stories deepen- gradually the child comes to understand the shadows in their past.

'Memory and nostalgia-the aunts' gifts to him, gifts of obligation-are the purest expression of love allowed them. These stories stay with the boy, guiding his beliefs and his path in life, until he can grow up and absorb the influences of the world around him, and become himself.

'Red Heaven is about the people who make us what we- how they come into our lives, instruct or affect us, then depart the stage. This fiction, with its affinity for the elusive beauties and sadnesses of the world, is Nicolas Rothwell's finest achievement.'  (Publication summary)

2022 winner Prime Minister's Literary Awards Fiction
2022 shortlisted Queensland Literary Awards The Courier-Mail People's Choice Queensland Book of the Year
2022 longlisted Mark and Evette Moran Nib Award for Literature
y separately published work icon Quicksilver Melbourne : Text Publishing , 2016 9798117 2016 single work prose travel

'Quicksilver begins on a quiet day in contemplation of a lizard deep in the heart of the outback but quickly moves to the Russia of Tolstoy and Gorky, and on to other lands and times, bringing into play universal questions about the essential nature of the human condition.'

'Rothwell’s chief subject is always the inland: the mystic Kurangara cult that flourished in the Kimberley; the story of the Western Desert artists, their works and their eventual fate; the tracks across the wilderness of Colonel Warburton and George Grey; the bush dreams and intuitions of D. H. Lawrence and the landscape word-portraits by the great biographer of nature Eric Rolls.'

'In Quicksilver Rothwell masterfully takes us in search of the sacred through place and time, in an enchanting reverie of calm wondering.' (Source: Text Publishing website)

2018 shortlisted New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards Multicultural NSW Award
2017 winner Prime Minister's Literary Awards Non-Fiction
y separately published work icon Belomor Melbourne : Text Publishing , 2013 Z1908626 2013 single work prose travel 'A spellbinding meditation on art and life that travels from Eastern Europe to Northern Australia, from World War II to the present.

Elegiac and seductive, Belomor is the frontier where truth and invention meet—where fragments from distant lives intermingle, and cohere.

A man seeks out the father figure who shaped his picture of the past. A painter seeks redemption after the disasters of his years in northern Australia. A student of history travels into the depths of religion, the better to escape the demons in his mind. A filmmaker seeks out freedom and open space, and looks into the murk and sediment of herself.

Four chapters: four journeys through life, separate, yet interwoven as the narrative unfolds.

In this entrancing new book from one of our most original writers, we meet European dissidents from the age of postwar communism, artists in remote Australia, snake hunters, opal miners and desert magic healers. Belomor is a meditation on time, and loss: on how the most bitter recollections bring happiness, and the meaning of a secret rests in the thoughts surrounding it.' (Publisher's blurb)
2014 shortlisted Prime Minister's Literary Awards Fiction
2014 longlisted Miles Franklin Literary Award
2013 longlisted Mark and Evette Moran Nib Award for Literature
Last amended 18 Oct 2007 14:17:55
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