 First edition | |
| Author | Michelle de Kretser |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Literary |
| Publisher | Allen and Unwin, Australia |
Publication date | 2012 |
| Publication place | Australia |
| Media type | Print (Paperback) |
| Pages | 517 pp |
| ISBN | 9781743311004 |
| Preceded by | The Lost Dog |
| Followed by | Springtime |
Questions of Travel is a 2012 novel by Australian author Michelle de Kretser. [1] It won the 2013 Miles Franklin Award and the 2013 Prime Minister's Literary Award for Fiction.
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." [2]
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." [3]
The novel's title, Questions of Travel, is a homage to a poem of the same name by Elizabeth Bishop. [4]
The novel carried the following dedication:
It also contained the following epigraphs:
The Miles Franklin Literary Award is an annual literary prize awarded to "a novel which is of the highest literary merit and presents Australian life in any of its phases". The award was set up according to the will of Miles Franklin (1879–1954), who is best known for writing the Australian classic My Brilliant Career (1901). She bequeathed her estate to fund this award. As of 2016, the award is valued at A$60,000.
Kathryn Heyman is an Australian writer of novels and plays. She is the director of the Australian Writers Mentoring Program and Fiction Program Director of Faber Writing Academy.
Charlotte Wood is an Australian novelist. The Australian newspaper described Wood as "one of our [Australia's] most original and provocative writers".
Gail Jones is an Australian novelist and academic.
Tara June Winch is an Australian writer. She is the 2020 winner of the Miles Franklin Award for her book The Yield.
Michelle de Kretser is an Australian novelist who was born in Sri Lanka, and moved to Australia in 1972 when she was 14.
Georgia Frances Elise Blain was an Australian novelist, journalist and biographer.
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Heather Rose is an Australian author born in Hobart, Tasmania. She is best known for her novels The Museum of Modern Love, which won the 2017 Stella Prize and the Christina Stead Prize, and Bruny (2019), which won Best General Fiction in the 2020 Australian Book Industry Awards. Rose's most recent book is the memoir Nothing Bad Ever Happens Here. She has also worked in advertising, business, and the arts.
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