Kangaroo, set in Australia, is D. H. Lawrence's eighth novel. He wrote the first draft in just forty-five days while living south of Sydney, in 1922, and revised it three months later in New Mexico. The descriptions of the country are among the most vivid and sympathetic ever penned, and the book fuses lightly disguised autobiography with an exploration of political ideas at an immensely personal level. His anxiety about the future of democracy, caught as it was in the turbulent cross currents of fascism and socialism, is only partly appeased by his vision of a new bond of comradeship between men based on their unique separateness. Lawrence's alter ego Richard Somers departs for America to continue his search.
Kangaroo
( dir. Tim Burstall
)
Australia
:
Western Pacific Films
Naked Country Productions
,
1987
7871581
1987
single work
film/TV
'Adapted from D.H. Lawrence's story of love, violence and political intrigue, based on his personal experiences in Australia in 1922. 'Kangaroo' - the code name of the charismatic leader of a secret fascist army - brings all his dark power to bear to seduce the writer into embracing his ideas, but the writer and his wife find strength in their love reawakened in the exotic southern land.'
Source: Screen Australia.
Kangaroo
United Kingdom (UK)
:
British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)
,
2000
8145728
2000
single work
radio play
'Set in Australia in 1922, Kangaroo tells the story of English writer Lovat and his wife, who arrive in Sydney in search of a new life.'
Source:
Radio Times, 2 March 2000, p.124.
'In 1922, self-exiled English novelist D.H. Lawrence arrived on Australian shores with his German wife Frieda. Travelling by steamboat from Italy to New Mexico via Sri Lanka, the pair disembarked in Sydney to spend a bit of time rediscovering their land legs. Lawrence was already a well-known writer by this point, with works such as Sons and Lovers and The Rainbow having been published in the decade before. However, this is to say little of his and Frieda’s financial situation.' (Introduction)
'From early Australian writers such as Henry Savery and Barron Field through to modernist luminaries such as D. H. Lawrence and contemporary refugee writers such as Behrouz Boochani, authors who have had only a temporary, contingent, or ephemeral relationship to Australia have been a major feature of Australian literary history. This chapter surveys these writers, showing how they pose perennial problems for the institutionalization of Australian literary studies.' (Publication abstract)
Covers the period that D.H. Lawrence and his wife Frieda spent in Australia.
