Winner

Voss Patrick White

Dustjacket synopsis:
"When Patrick White's most celebrated novel, Voss, first appeared the Sunday Times declared: 'In size, intention and achievement Voss is the work of a man for whom Tolstoy is the only fitting rival.' The Observer report it 'a work of genius. In a world of tiny giants and giant dwarfs two contemporary novelists stood alone -- Faulkner and Malraux. They have been joined by a third.'

"In 1973 Patrick White was awarded the Nobel prize for Literature 'for an epic, psychological narrative art which has introduced a new continent into literature.'"

First Paragraph:

"There is a man here, miss, asking for your uncle," said Rose.

And stood breathing.

"What man?" asked the young woman, who was engaged upon some embroidery of a difficult nature, at which she was now forced to look more closely, holding the little frame to the light. "Or is it perhaps a gentleman?"

"I do not know,: said the servant. "It is a kind of foreign man."

Something had made this woman monotonous. Her big breasts moved dully as she spoke, or she would stand, and the weight of her silences impressed itself on strangers. If the more sensitive amongst those she served or addressed failed to look at Rose, it was because her manner seemed to accuse the conscience, or it could have been, more simply, that they were embarrassed by her hairlip.

From the Jonathan Cape hardback edition, 1980.

This page and its contents are copyright © 2006 by Perry Middlemiss, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

Last modified: March 13, 2006.