Questions of Travel
9781743311004
Questions of Travel is a 2012 novel by Australian author Michelle de Kretser. It won the 2013 Miles Franklin Award and the 2013 Prime Minister's Literary Award for Fiction.
Description
The novel concerns two main characters: Laura—an Australian woman who travels the world before returning to Sydney to work for a publisher of travel guides—and Ravi—an IT professional from Sri Lanka who flees his country after a major trauma. The novel "illuminates travel, work and modern dreams in this brilliant evocation of the way we live now."[1]
Owen Richardson, in his review of the novel in The Monthly described it as "...a big, ambitious novel of Sydney and the world, globalisation and divided identities. It is everywhere full of intelligence and a vivid sense of individual lives."[2]
The novel's title, Questions of Travel, is a homage to a poem of the same name by Elizabeth Bishop.[3]
Awards
- 2013 shortlisted Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIA) — Australian Literary Fiction Book of the Year
- 2013 winner ALS Gold Medal
- 2013 shortlisted Indie Book Awards — Fiction
- 2013 winner Miles Franklin Award
- 2013 shortlisted Nita Kibble Literary Awards — Nita Kibble Literary Award
- 2013 winner Prime Minister's Literary Awards — Fiction
- 2013 shortlisted the Stella Prize
- 2013 winner Western Australian Premier's Book Awards — Premier's Prize
- 2013 winner Western Australian Premier's Book Awards — Fiction
- 2014 shortlisted Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature — Award for Fiction
- 2014 shortlisted International Dublin Literary Award
- 2014 winner New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards — Book of the Year
- 2014 joint winner New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards — Community Relations Commission Award With Andrew Bovell's stage adaptation of The Secret River.
- 2014 winner New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards — Christina Stead Prize for Fiction
- 2014 shortlisted Victorian Premier's Literary Awards — The Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction
Notes
The novel carried the following dedication:
- "In memory of Leah Akie".
It also contained the following epigraphs:
- "Under cosmopolitanism, if it comes, we shall receive no help from the earth. Trees and meadows and mountains will only be a spectacle...." E.M. Forster Howards End.
- "But surely it would have been a pity not to have seen the trees along this road, really exaggerated in their beauty." Elizabeth Bishop Questions of Travel.
- "Anywhere! Anywhere!" Charles Baudelaire Anywhere Out of the World.
Reviews
- Frank Moorhouse in The Guardian: "Australia has been waiting for a book which looks into the face of travel and sees it for all the illusions and traps and shallowness and, sometimes, life-changing meaning that it offers or withholds."[3]
- Randy Boyagoda in The New York Times: "Like our expectations of travel, as opposed to the realities we usually experience, de Kretser’s novel is a book full of promise that offers many passing wonders and intensities amid a lot of busy-making and slack time."[4]
References
- v
- t
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- Voss by Patrick White (1957)
- To the Islands by Randolph Stow (1958)
- The Big Fellow by Vance Palmer (1959)
- The Irishman by Elizabeth O'Conner (1960)
- Riders in the Chariot by Patrick White (1961)
- The Well Dressed Explorer by Thea Astley (1962)
- The Cupboard Under the Stairs by George Turner (1962)
- Careful, He Might Hear You by Sumner Locke Elliott (1963)
- My Brother Jack by George Johnston (1964)
- The Slow Natives by Thea Astley (1965)
- Trap by Peter Mathers (1966)
- Bring Larks and Heroes by Thomas Keneally (1967)
- Three Cheers for the Paraclete by Thomas Keneally (1968)
- Clean Straw for Nothing by George Johnston (1969)
- A Horse of Air by Dal Stivens (1970)
- The Unknown Industrial Prisoner by David Ireland (1971)
- The Acolyte by Thea Astley (1972)
- No award (1973)
- The Mango Tree by Ronald McKie (1974)
- Poor Fellow My Country by Xavier Herbert (1976)
- The Glass Canoe by David Ireland (1977)
- Swords and Crowns and Rings by Ruth Park (1978)
- A Woman of the Future by David Ireland (1979)
- The Impersonators by Jessica Anderson (1980)
- Bliss by Peter Carey (1981)
- Just Relations by Rodney Hall (1982)
- No award (1983)
- Shallows by Tim Winton (1984)
- The Doubleman by Christopher Koch (1985)
- The Well by Elizabeth Jolley (1986)
- Dancing on Coral by Glenda Adams (1987)
- No award (1988)
- Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey (1989)
- Oceana Fine by Tom Flood (1990)
- The Great World by David Malouf (1991)
- Cloudstreet by Tim Winton (1992)
- The Ancestor Game by Alex Miller (1993)
- The Grisly Wife by Rodney Hall (1994)
- The Hand That Signed the Paper by Helen Darville (1995)
- Highways to a War by Christopher Koch (1996)
- The Glade Within the Grove by David Foster (1997)
- Jack Maggs by Peter Carey (1998)
- Eucalyptus by Murray Bail (1999)
- Drylands by Thea Astley (2000)
- Benang by Kim Scott (2000)
- Dark Palace by Frank Moorhouse (2001)
- Dirt Music by Tim Winton (2002)
- Journey to the Stone Country by Alex Miller (2003)
- The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard (2004)
- The White Earth by Andrew McGahan (2005)
- The Ballad of Desmond Kale by Roger McDonald (2006)
- Carpentaria by Alexis Wright (2007)
- The Time We Have Taken by Steven Carroll (2008)
- Breath by Tim Winton (2009)
- Truth by Peter Temple (2010)
- That Deadman Dance by Kim Scott (2011)
- All That I Am by Anna Funder (2012)
- Questions of Travel by Michelle de Kretser (2013)
- All the Birds, Singing by Evie Wyld (2014)
- The Eye of the Sheep by Sofie Laguna (2015)
- Black Rock White City by A. S. Patrić (2016)
- Extinctions by Josephine Wilson (2017)
- The Life to Come by Michelle de Kretser (2018)
- Too Much Lip by Melissa Lucashenko (2019)
- The Yield by Tara June Winch (2020)
- The Labyrinth by Amanda Lohrey (2021)
- Bodies of Light by Jennifer Down (2022)
- Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens by Shankari Chandran (2023)