Morris Lurie Morris Lurie i(A31536 works by)
Also writes as: M. Lurie
Born: Established: 30 Oct 1938 Carlton, Parkville - Carlton area, Melbourne - North, Melbourne, Victoria, ; Died: Ceased: 8 Oct 2014 Melbourne, Victoria,
Gender: Male
Heritage: Jewish ; Polish
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BiographyHistory

Morris Lurie's parents, Arie and Esther Lurie, were Jewish, coming to Australia from Poland. They died when their son was in his early twenties. Lurie attended school at Elwood Central School, Prahran Technical School and Melbourne High School. He matriculated in 1956 with first class honours. Lurie then studied architecture the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and worked for a time in advertising before becoming a fulltime writer. He lived overseas in Greece, Denmark, Morocco and England, with frequent visits to New York, during the period 1967 to 1978. Lurie wrote over a hundred short stories, widely published in Australia and in overseas magazines and newspapers.

Lurie said that he grew up 'in a strange bubble of isolation' because of his parents' double alienation from Poland and from Australia. The protagonists of his novels are typically solitary, homeless or expatriate figures; the themes of his short stories are often concerned with unstable family relationships, mirroring in some way his own unhappy childhood. However, his writing also incorporates a humorous style, compared to that of American writers such as Isaac Singer, Saul Bellow and Phillip Roth, who shared Lurie's Jewish origins.

Most Referenced Works

Personal Awards

Awards for Works

The Fat Kid's Revenge 1994 single work prose
— Appears in: Island , Winter no. 59 1994; (p. 43-46) Columbus' Blindness and Other Essays 1994; (p. 199-209) Seventeen Versions of Jewishness : Twenty Examples 2001; (p. 82-94)
1994 runner-up Island-North Essay Competition
Towards a New Definition of Radical Feminism 1994 single work short story
— Appears in: Ulitarra , no. 6 1994; (p. 7-13) The String 1995; (p. 69-82)
1994 winner Ulitarra-Shaeffer Pen Short Story Competition
y separately published work icon Whole Life : An Autobiography Melbourne : McPhee Gribble , 1987 Z398314 1987 single work autobiography Morris Lurie's frank, amusing and at times brutal memories of his childhood dominated by his mother, his father and his grandfather. The author emerges as a man who understands how he has been shaped by his family and his upbringing. (Source: LibrariesAustralia)
1988 second NBC Banjo Awards NBC Banjo Award

Known archival holdings

State Library of Victoria (VIC)
Last amended 9 Oct 2014 10:08:16
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