'Antipodes - stories which pinpoint the contrast between the old world and the new, between youth and age, love and hatred and even life and death itself...'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
'There is a point in the northern part of the state, or rather, a line that runs waveringly across it, where the vegetation changes within minutes. A cataclysmic second a million or more years back has pushed two disparate land masses violently together, the one open savannah country with rocky outcrops and forests of blue-grey feathery gums, the other sub-tropical scrub. You arrive at the crest of a ridge and a whole new landscape swings into view. Hoop pines and bunya command the skyline. There are palm-trees, banana plantations. Leisurely broad rivers that seem always in flood go rolling seaward between stands of plumed and scented cane. It is as if you had dozed off at the wheel a moment and woken a whole day further on.' (Introduction)
'The essay addresses the poetic dimension of David Malouf's novels, suggesting that a poetics of possibility can be found in all his work. The poetics of possibility is a function both of Malouf’s thematic interest in the future and of his use of poetic language to draw the reader to imagine various kinds of ways of experiencing and knowing the world. The essay draws upon the philosophy of Ernst Bloch to illuminate the utopian dimension of Malouf’s work, whether in seeing the radiance of possibility in simple objects, the silent ‘presence’ at the centre of language, or the possibility of a different kind of future that Australian society might have experienced.' (Publication abstract)