Outstanding Review for David Foster: The Satirist of Australia
Cambria Press congratulates Dr. Susan Lever (general editor of the Cambria Australian Literature Series) on the recent outstanding review of her book, David Foster: The Satirist of Australia, by Australian Literary Studies, which praises the work—among other reasons––because “Lever begins the very necessary work of bridging the gap between generalist studies of European or British satire and the idiosyncrasies of Australian satirical writing.”
This book has already garnered many accolades from other academic journals and was also shortlisted for Australia’s prestigious Walter McRae Russell Award.
David Foster is the most original, challenging, contradictory, risk-taking and infuriating Australian novelist of his generation. Four of Foster’s novels have won major literary awards in Australia: his first novel, The Pure Land (1974), shared the first Age Book of the Year award (with volume three of Manning Clark’s A History of Australia) in 1975; his second novel, Moonlite (1981), was the National Book Council Book of the Year for 1981; The Glade Within the Grove (1996) won the Miles Franklin award in 1997; and In the New Country (1999) was the inaugural Brisbane Courier-Mail Book of the Year in 1999. Foster’s novels have attracted the admiration of many other writers and critics, including White, Geoffrey Dutton, Randolph Stow and Annie Proulx, and his contribution to Australian writing has been recognized by several Australia Council grants and a prestigious ‘Keating’ Creative Fellowship in 1991.
In this first critical study of David Foster’s works, Susan Lever steers us into penetrating the mysteries of Foster’s fiction, and provides guidance to readers willing to approach them. The book examines the contradictory nature of his commitments and interests as expressed mainly in his novels. Each of his works of fiction and poetry in the order of publication (except for The Adventures of Christian Rosy Cross and The Pale Blue Crochet Coathanger Cover which are discussed with similar novels) are discussed. The development of Foster’s philosophical ideas and technique as a novelist over the 35 years of his writing life to date is followed. The book also examines Foster’s letters to Geoffrey Dutton early in his career; his interviews and essays provide some of the background to these novels. The book also furnishes a sense of the Australian context for his work. A brief biography of Foster’s early life and a discussion of his approach to satire is also included.
Recommend this book to your librarian today! They can order it directly from Cambria Press or they can order through their preferred academic book wholesaler (Cambria Press is on the approval list of premier wholesalers like YBP).
STAY POSTED! Follow Cambria Press on Twitter, like Cambria Press on Facebook, and share this news from Cambria Press on Google+!