'Two children are brought to a wild garden on the shores of Sydney Harbour to shelter from the Second World War. The boy's mother has died in the Blitz. The girl is the daughter of a Sydney woman and a Communist executed in a Greek prison. In wartime Australia, these two children form an extraordinary bond as they negotiate the dangers of life as strangers abandoned on the far side of the world. With the tenderness and rigour of an old, wise novelist, Patrick White explores the world of these children, the city of his childhood and the experience of war. The Hanging Garden ends as the news reaches Sydney of victory in Europe, and the children face their inevitable separation.
White put the novel aside at this point and how he planned to finish the work remains a mystery. But at his death in 1990 he left behind a masterpiece in the making, which is published here for the first time.'
Source: Publisher's blurb
'This chapter will build on recent work by Elizabeth McMahon and Christos Tsiolkas to situate Australia’s first Nobel Prize winner as a queer modernist with his own distinct political valence. Written by the foremost Chinese scholar of Australian literature, Chen Hong, this chapter explores Whites epochal career. It covers White’s novelistic oeuvre from The Aunt’s Story (1948) through to his late queer masterpiece, The Twyborn Affair (1979).' (Publication abstract)
A column canvassing current literary news. Discusses recent writers festivals, the death of Hazel Rowley and the forthcoming publication of The Hanging Garden in 2012.
