Critical Perspective

David Joseph Malouf, better known today for the lyrical language of novels like An Imaginary Life (1978) and Remembering Babylon (1993), started his earliest literary experiments in the form of poetry rather than prose. It was Neighbours in a Thicket: Poems (1974) that brought him into limelight and first gave him a reputation as a notable new Australian talent. The prize (Australian Literature Society Gold Medal, among others) winning Neighbours in a Thicket: Poems, which draws freely from Malouf’s past life, comprises intimate memories of his childhood spent in the suburbs and of domestic experiences, family members and the War, and travel in Europe. If the most impressive feature of his early poems is the shift between affection and recollection, in his later poems he returns to child hood experience.
His Neighbours in a Thicket: Poems was followed by his first novel Johono in 1975. Often considered as one of his most autobiographical novels, it covers a landscape that maps wartime Australia and Europe. The story is told from the perspective of Dante who, after the death of his father, has returned to England. Though Dante is at the centre of this semi autobiographical novel, yet the text in many respects seems more concerned with Johono’s life. Though Johono is Dante’s friend, yet in many ways they are contrasts. Dante with his middleclass conservative attitude is definitely an opposite of the wild antics of Johono, as a shoplifter and