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y separately published work icon The Ancestor Game single work   novel  
Issue Details: First known date: 1992... 1992 The Ancestor Game
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'Steven Muir, August Spiess and his daughter Gertrude, and Lang Tzu all acknowledge a restless sense of cultural displacement, an ambivalence in their relations with the culture of European Australia. Steven left England for Australia as a young man and his one attempt at returning is unsuccessful. August Spiess, although he speaks frequently of returning to his native Hamburg, fails to make the journey, as does his daughter Gertrude. Lang Tzu's very name defines his fate: 'two characters which in Mandarin signify the son who goes away.

'The 'game', however, does have winners. For despite their yearnings for the home of their ancestral dreams, a desire to belong somewhere that is truly their own, none of Miller's characters leaves Australia, and each in their own way comes to see that to be at home in exile may be a defining paradox of the European Australian condition: the paradox of belonging and estrangement that perhaps lies uneasily at the heart of all European cultures.'

Source: Bookseller's blurb.

Notes

  • Dedication: For Ruth and Max Blatt.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • Ringwood, Ringwood - Croydon - Kilsyth area, Melbourne - East, Melbourne, Victoria,: Penguin , 1992 .
      image of person or book cover 7135301557585432250.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 302p.
      ISBN: 0140159878 (pbk.)
    • Minneapolis-St Paul, Minnesota,
      c
      United States of America (USA),
      c
      Americas,
      :
      Graywolf Press ,
      1993 .
      image of person or book cover 7895491187867245802.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 302p.
      ISBN: 1555972179
    • St Leonards, North Sydney - Lane Cove area, Sydney Northern Suburbs, Sydney, New South Wales,: Allen and Unwin , 2000 .
      image of person or book cover 7649505256564307262.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 302p.
      ISBN: 1865083151
    • Crows Nest, North Sydney - Lane Cove area, Sydney Northern Suburbs, Sydney, New South Wales,: Allen and Unwin , 2003 .
      Extent: 302p.
      ISBN: 1741142261 (pbk.)
    • Crows Nest, North Sydney - Lane Cove area, Sydney Northern Suburbs, Sydney, New South Wales,: Allen and Unwin , 2016 .
      image of person or book cover 42980618728988108.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 302p.
      Edition info: 25th Anniversary Ed.
      ISBN: 9781760294830
Alternative title: 浪子
Transliterated title: Lang zi
Language: Chinese
    • Chongqing,
      c
      China,
      c
      East Asia, South and East Asia, Asia,
      :
      Chongqing chu ban she ,
      1995 .
      Alternative title: Lang Zi
      Extent: 278p.
      Note/s:
      • Text in simplified Chinese script. Other names credited with translation process.
      ISBN: 7536631340
    • Qingdao,
      c
      China,
      c
      East Asia, South and East Asia, Asia,
      :
      Qingdao chu ban she ,
      2018 .
      Extent: xxiv, 305p.
      ISBN: 9787555261247 (hbk.)
      Series: y separately published work icon 李尧译文集 [Ten Volume Translation of Australian Literature]; 澳大利亚文学经典; Li Yao : Translation Series; Australian Literary Classics; Aodaliya wen xue jing dian Li Yao (translator), Qingdao : Qingdao chu ban she , 2017-2018 18349529 2017 series - publisher novel Number in series: 3

Other Formats

  • Braille.
  • Sound recording.

Works about this Work

y separately published work icon Reckoning with the Past : Family Historiographies in Postcolonial Australian Literature Ashley Barnwell , Joseph Cummins , Abingdon : Routledge , 2018 17218286 2018 single work criticism

'This is the first book to examine how Australian fiction writers draw on family histories to reckon with the nation's colonial past. Located at the intersection of literature, history, and sociology, it explores the relationships between family storytelling, memory, and postcolonial identity. With attention to the political potential of family histories, Reckoning with the Past argues that authors' often autobiographical works enable us to uncover, confront, and revise national mythologies. An important contribution to the emerging global conversation about multidirectional memory and the need to attend to the effects of colonisation, this book will appeal to an interdisciplinary field of scholarly readers. '

Source: Publisher's blurb.

An Interpretation of Langtze's Artistic Complex in The Ancestor Game Du Yanping , 2015 single work criticism
— Appears in: Oceanic Literary Studies , no. 2 2015; (p. 97-106)
'The Ancestor Game is a novel about the family history of immigrant Feng's four generation from Fujian, China to Australia with the theme of individual, land, history, thought and culture. The lifetime of the fourth generation Langtze is closely related with art. In the light of the thought of existential needs in the theory of personality by humanistic psychoanalyst Erich Fromm, readers can interpret the protagonist Langtze's artistic complex to better understand the excellent work.' (97)
Facts Key to Fiction Sally Pryor (interviewer), 2013 single work interview
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 25 April 2013; (p. 9)
'Alex Miller talks to Sally Pryor about faith, fiction - and duck dung'
Dougald's Goat : Alex Miller and the Species Barrier David Brooks , 2012 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Novels of Alex Miller : An Introduction 2012; (p. 187-200)
'I would like to open with a proposition, a theory if you like, that, in a great many narratives , there is a place, a site, where they confess, or at least pay some acknowledgement to, the stories they have not followed in order to follow the story that they have. Their roadkil, one might facetiously term it, their rejectamenta, their abject. And it is not just stories, it is concepts as well, even or perhaps especially ethical positions: places, sites, where they acknowledge all that has had to be set aside in order for those stories, concepts and ethical positions to come to be. I do not say that they in any way specify or itemise them, or that this acknowledgement is anything but the vaguest symbolisation - indeed, it is so much a matter of the subconscious that it is hard to see how it could be - although in some cases they can take a pronounced and almost indisputable form. In one of the bold philosophical projects of which I sometimes dream, I would in fact go further and attempt to demonstrate a collateral premise that much of our human ethics are based upon a separation from and rejection - abjection is a better term, since this is a matter of our identity and what we do to shore it - of the animal, and that the animal therefore always haunts, unacknowledged, our ethical reflections. Miller's texts, I suggest, are ethical reflections, and so are haunted in this way.' (Author's introduction 187)
Continental Heartlands and Alex Miller’s Geosophical Imaginary Elizabeth McMahon , 2012 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Novels of Alex Miller : An Introduction 2012; (p. 125-138)
This chapter examines 'how the alignment between geography and subjectivity operates in four of Miller's novels to identify his refiguration of the inherited map of modern identities.' (125)
McMahon focuses on The Ancestor Game (1992), Conditions of Faith (2000), Journey to the Stone Country (2002) and Landscape of Farewell (2007).
The Other : Historical, Geographical Enrique Martinez , 1992 single work review
— Appears in: The CRNLE Reviews Journal , no. 2 1992; (p. 114-118)

— Review of The Ancestor Game Alex Miller , 1992 single work novel
About Books : China Matters Nicholas Jose , 1992 single work review
— Appears in: National Library of Australia News , September vol. 2 no. 12 1992; (p. 8-10)

— Review of Mates of Mars David Foster , 1991 single work novel ; The Hole Through the Centre of the World : A Novel Kevin Brophy , 1991 single work novel ; After China Brian Castro , 1992 single work novel ; La Mort de Napoléon Simon Leys , 1986 single work novel ; The Yellow Lady : Australian Impressions of Asia Alison Broinowski , 1992 single work criticism ; The Ancestor Game Alex Miller , 1992 single work novel
Where Are You from Really? Sophie Masson , 1992 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , August no. 143 1992; (p. 4-5)

— Review of The Ancestor Game Alex Miller , 1992 single work novel
Trapped in an Ancestral Mirror Helen Daniel , 1992 single work review
— Appears in: The Age , 15 August 1992; (p. 9)

— Review of The Ancestor Game Alex Miller , 1992 single work novel
Fruitful Mating of Cultures Gerard Windsor , 1992 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 15-16 August 1992; (p. rev 4)

— Review of The Ancestor Game Alex Miller , 1992 single work novel
Who are the Custodians? 沈嘉蔚 , 2003 single work criticism
— Appears in: Southerly , vol. 63 no. 1 2003; (p. 154-161)
The Solitariness of Alex Miller Peter Pierce , 2004 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , May vol. 21 no. 3 2004; (p. 299-311)
The article presents an overview of Alex Miller's literary career and development as a writer and examines his six novels published to date.
The Ancestor Complex : The Theme of The Ancestor Game 黄源深 , 1995 single work criticism
— Appears in: A Unique Literature : A Critical View of Australian Literary Works 1995; (p. 234-251)
From European Satellite to Asian Backwater? Lars Jensen , 2002 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Studies , Winter vol. 15 no. 2 2002; (p. 133-152) Contemporary Issues in Australian Literature 2002; (p. 133-152)
Lars Jensen reads Adib Khan's Seasonal Adjustments in order to discuss 'how Australia looks from a comparative Asian perspective' (134).
The Chinese Man in 'The Ancestor Game' Pan Zijie , 2007 single work criticism
— Appears in: Southerly , vol. 67 no. 3 2007; (p. 96-110)
Last amended 27 Nov 2019 15:15:15
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