One of the most astonishing pieces of Australian writing I have ever read. It's no secret that Malouf is one of our national treasures, but Remembering Babylon is something else entirely. Written from a dozen or so perspectives, each absorbing in its accuracy, Malouf turns his eye in this short novel to the complexities of colonialism, specifically among white, rural Australians in the 1860s. Less than a century after the country was colonised, a small town (village?) of white people struggle with the introduction amongst them of a white man who has been living with Indigenous people for 16 years. Their concern about whether he has completely lost "it", their fear of the unknown - anything beyond view of their steeple - and that uncomfortable, uneasy relationship with their own colonialism, their sense of inferiority to the mother country, and the social and cultural clashes between neighbours that have made up every society since time immemorial... all captured in fewer than 200 pages.

Malouf smartly chooses not to write from the Indigenous perspective - he has rightly said that no white person in Australia can really do that - but gives us enough touches through Gemmy's point of view that we understand the true tragedy of colonialism, as symbolised through Janet's relationship with her bees. Being able to see them communicate but not quite understand how, and wondering if you knew it once, is a thought that has often haunted me, and remains haunting.

By 1860, my ancestors were well settled in Australia, their children becoming young adults and soon to have children of their own. My relationship with this land - as a white, rural-born, gay, intellectual, urbanite - is a complex one, and so is my relationship with the attempted genocide my ancestors perpetuated. Although the killing ended long ago, the cultural suppression continued well into the 1960s - the decade of my parents' birth - and we live with a lineage of divided privilege, culture, and sentiment. Compared to our neighbours "across the pond", New Zealand, who charted a very different 19th century, it is very telling.

To return to Malouf's work, his prose is tight, almost silhouetting the situations that occur, using the characters' summations of moments and often sidestepping detail, to leave us caught in the shadow between the people involved. It's a strange, sometimes surprisingly synopsis-like approach to writing, and yet it somehow produces a staggering effect. This is a quintessential Australian novel, one that examines our tortured history without unfairly chastising. The relationship between white and black is one key theme, but so is the relationship between home and away. Even now in 2018, the so-called "cultural cringe" remains strong in Australia. We have a fractious relationship with the UK, and within ourselves about the UK - the proximity to "the world", the lengthy history and culture, the feeling that we have been distanced from so much cultural understanding through the fault of our parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and so on. We often discuss this in the context of Australia's newer migrant families, but I can attest it remains strong in an eighth-generation Australian like myself. To peer into the minds of people who themselves remember the mother country, or - even worse - have heard it from everyone around them but are themselves inexperienced, is a gift in the hands of Malouf.

Perhaps this is a work about questions, not about answers. The answers are for us to find - if, indeed, we ever can. ( )

All the characters in this extraordinary book see themselves as "the outsider", but because of their shared colonial pioneering position, they make Gemmy the outsider.
I thoroughly enjoyed the way David Malouf introduces the bare bones of the story, and then gives us the back story on so many of the characters.
There is suspicion and distrust, compassion and understanding, despair and struggle.

My daughter had been assigned 'Remembering Babylon' as part of a literature course in her university studies, and had left it at my place when she'd finished. I am so grateful. ( )

What a difficult little book. I'm not sure what I would have made of this story had I not been familiar with Hegel's Master/Slave dialectic. Still, though high on intellectual delicacy, the narrative was a little low on nourishment. Is it possible for a writer to be too masterful to be interesting? ( )

What a difficult little book. I'm not sure what I would have made of this story had I not been familiar with Hegel's Master/Slave dialectic. Still, though high on intellectual delicacy, the narrative was a little low on nourishment. Is it possible for a writer to be too masterful to be interesting? ( )

David Malouf's "Remembering Babylon" is an interesting book. It wasn't at all on my radar until it was selected as a group read so I didn't go into it with any expectations. I mostly enjoyed the book though it felt like the story wasn't entirely complete -- it was rough around the edges, but still readable and enjoyable.

The story focuses on Gemmy, a cabin boy who was cast ashore on Australia by sailors. He lived among the aborigines until walking onto a settler's farm some years later, where he is greeted with a mixture of astonishment and distrust.

Malouf introduces all the characters and then focuses on their back stories -- showing how they came to be where they are when the story opened. There was a lot of discussion about the final chapter in my book group -- which makes a somewhat jarring transition to the future. I didn't mind it though -- it was interesting to see where the characters ended up. ( )