- Paperback: 224 pages
- Publisher: Vintage Books; Reprint edition (Oct 1994)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0679749519
- ISBN-13: 978-0679749516
- Product Dimensions: 13.1 x 1.5 x 20.2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 817,582 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Review
"A dazzling novel...The story has moments of such high intensity that they remain scorched in memory. As the story moves forward to its conclusion, we go unwillingly with it, not wanting this book, with the wisdom it contains, to stop speaking to us." --The Toronto Star
""Remembering Babylon is another rare chance to read a work by one of the few contemporary novelists who examines our constantly battered humanity and again and again brings out its lingering beauty." --The Globe and Mail
"There are passages of aching beauty in "Remembering Babylon, and passages of shocking degradation. Mr. Malouf has written a wonderfully wise and moving novel, a novel that turns the history and mythic past of Australia into a dazzling fable of human hope and imperfection." --"The New York Times
""Remembering Babylon is another rare chance to read a work by one of the few contemporary novelists who examines our constantly battered humanity and again and again brings out its lingering beauty." --The Globe and Mail
"There are passages of aching beauty in "Remembering Babylon, and passages of shocking degradation. Mr. Malouf has written a wonderfully wise and moving novel, a novel that turns the history and mythic past of Australia into a dazzling fable of human hope and imperfection." --"The New York Times
--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
Product Description
Winner of the IMPAC Award and Booker Prize nominee
In this rich and compelling novel, written in language of astonishing poise and resonance, one of Australia's greatest living writers gives and immensely powerful vision of human differences and eternal divisions. In the mid-1840s a thirteen-year-old British cabin boy, Gemmy Fairley, is cast ashore in the far north of Australia and taken in by aborigines. Sixteen years later he moves back into the world of Europeans, among hopeful yet terrified settlers who are staking out their small patch of home in an alien place. To them, Gemmy stands as a different kind of challenge: he is a force that at once fascinates and repels. His own identity in this new world is as unsettling to him as the knowledge he brings to others of the savage, the aboriginal.
"Breathtaking...To read this remarkable book is to remember Babylon well, whether you think you've been there or not."
--The New York Times Book Review
In this rich and compelling novel, written in language of astonishing poise and resonance, one of Australia's greatest living writers gives and immensely powerful vision of human differences and eternal divisions. In the mid-1840s a thirteen-year-old British cabin boy, Gemmy Fairley, is cast ashore in the far north of Australia and taken in by aborigines. Sixteen years later he moves back into the world of Europeans, among hopeful yet terrified settlers who are staking out their small patch of home in an alien place. To them, Gemmy stands as a different kind of challenge: he is a force that at once fascinates and repels. His own identity in this new world is as unsettling to him as the knowledge he brings to others of the savage, the aboriginal.
"Breathtaking...To read this remarkable book is to remember Babylon well, whether you think you've been there or not."
--The New York Times Book Review
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
'Remembering Babylon' is the third novel that I have read by this wonderfully accomplished Australian writer: the other two, both of which would unreservedly get a 5-star rating, are 'Child's Play', an exploration of the mind of a young man planning a terrorist act in Rome, and 'A Great World', dealing with the impact of war on two Australian men. 'Remembering Babylon' well-deserves the plaudits lavished upon it, which include winning the inaugural IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the Miles Franklin Award, as well as being short-listed for the Booker.
The plot of 'Remembering Babylon' revolves around Gemmy, a white youth who is taken in by an isolated settlement of Scottish migrants in mid-nineteenth century Queensland. Gemmy has been living for many years with an Aboriginal community who found him washed ashore after the then young cabin-boy had been thrown overboard. The remainder of the novel essentially examines the interaction between Gemmy and the white community: Malouf achieves this by relating the thoughts and actions of Gemmy and the expertly-crafted range of diverse characters within the settlement. Although compassion and tolerance are shown by members of this community towards Gemmy, the novel mainly illustrates the mistrust and fear that even supposedly civilised individuals and communities show for that which is unknown or incompletely understood. Thus, the white community is fearful of the 'half-savage' white boy within their midst; the hostile, alien Australian landscape, and the native inhabitants of the land, whilst Gemmy is mistrustful of many of the settlers and afraid of the answers to his self-examination as to his own identity.
'Remembering Babylon' offers a range of treats for those interested in language. Gemmy's cry on first encountering children from the white settlement - "Do not shoot. I am a British object" - prefaces some interesting observations on the acquisition and retention of language. The white settlers' spoken English reflects their Scottish roots, whilst the schoolmaster's interests allow for more linguistic play. Two passages of note in a novel replete with fine language are one on bee-keeping (of all things) that transforms the life of Janet, a young lady coming of age in the settlement, and another describing bushfires that is guaranteed to make expatriate Australians homesick!
In short, 'Remembering Babylon' is a truly remarkable reading experience. On the strength of this novel and my limited exposure to his earlier works, I have recently bought three more of his novels. If you love quality contemporary fiction, then 'Remembering Babylon' would be an excellent introduction to the work of this exceptionally fine writer.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
David Malouf depicts yet another specimen of humanity in his novel, Remembering Babylon. In the middle of the nineteenth century, Gemmy Fairley, the young man who has lost his essential whiteness among the aborigines in the heart of the unknown emerges as the real son of Australia. Having lived a very sordid childhood as the boy of a heartless rat-catcher, he experienced nothing but what was ignoble and degrading in the underpriviledged white world that nursed him. When he is found by a tribe of aborigines, he is lightly taken in by the new community. He gradually sloughs off his white selfhood and goes deeper and deeper into the heart of nature - the tender womb of Australia from which he emerges again as the Australian New Man. when he steps into the closed world of the White Man after sixteen years, he is only grudgingly taken in as a painful example of white degradation in alien surroundings. With a penetrating wit and a florid style, David Malouf depicts the fateful encounter between British White civilisation and the weird product of its transformation on the edge of the 'livable' world. Malouf's prose teems with the life of nature and the tumult of human emotions. His language is profoundly poetic and his varied concoctions of words come to testify to the depth and intensity of meaning. With Malouf, you have access to the human in its most profound sense.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Mr. David Malouf has the ability to take familiar topics, amend them, and create a new viewpoint, a valid book, and worthwhile reading experience. Fear generated by the unknown as perceived by ignorant or well-educated simpletons is not new. That these feelings are often expressed in terms of racial tension; hatred and violence are routine, not an exception, and anything but a novelty. In, "Remembering Babylon" the Author tells the tale in a manner new for me, and even though the behaviors of many involved were predictable, the new perspective and quality the Author brings to it made for very good reading.
As he has in previous works he sets the tale in Australia, and once again brings settlers from Europe, in this case Scotland. Mr. Malouf then takes a familiar human interaction, which is by definition tragic, and it is here he makes it his own. In terms of Race, Gemmy is as white as any of the settlers. He spent thirteen years in London, and then was washed upon the coast of Australia where he then lives amongst the Native Aborigines for sixteen years. As Gemmy has lived the better part of his life is the harsh sun he is no longer as light in complexion as the self-described white newcomers. Gemmy one day happens across the path of some children, and in fear of his safety announces he "is a British Object". The irony of this statement could be dwelt on for pages by itself.
There are many relationships a reader can explore in this story. I felt a key one was between Gemmy and the family headed by Jock that takes him in. Jock does so to please his wife, as Gemmy is not a person he would bring into his home of his own volition. The reaction of the balance of the settlement ranges from degrees of fear, to desire to destroy the race that Gemmy has morphed into from the viewpoint of the duller of the participants. Gemmy at once becomes a trusted member of Jock's Family, and the focus for every evil fantasized, imagined, or counterfeited by others.
The storyline must be left for the book; however one experience shared by Jock and Gemmy is of note. Gemmy treated like the savage he is not, routinely stays several steps ahead of those who attempt to exploit him to gain knowledge of his tribe, and then extinguish them. Far from being intellectually inept, he combines the street smarts of the former London Urchin, with the practical knowledge of sixteen years of learning to live in harmony with the same land the settlers come to conquer. He becomes a harmless, productive and trustworthy part of Jock's Family if not the community.
Gemmy knows his own heart, and those he has come to live amongst. He is under no illusions as to how he is viewed, or how he sees the world. Jock goes through a major reassessment of what he thought he was, as events build around Gemmy. The Author explores in a thoughtful manner what our thoughts are made of, how they change, and whether it is we that change, or our views of others that change us.
As he has in previous works he sets the tale in Australia, and once again brings settlers from Europe, in this case Scotland. Mr. Malouf then takes a familiar human interaction, which is by definition tragic, and it is here he makes it his own. In terms of Race, Gemmy is as white as any of the settlers. He spent thirteen years in London, and then was washed upon the coast of Australia where he then lives amongst the Native Aborigines for sixteen years. As Gemmy has lived the better part of his life is the harsh sun he is no longer as light in complexion as the self-described white newcomers. Gemmy one day happens across the path of some children, and in fear of his safety announces he "is a British Object". The irony of this statement could be dwelt on for pages by itself.
There are many relationships a reader can explore in this story. I felt a key one was between Gemmy and the family headed by Jock that takes him in. Jock does so to please his wife, as Gemmy is not a person he would bring into his home of his own volition. The reaction of the balance of the settlement ranges from degrees of fear, to desire to destroy the race that Gemmy has morphed into from the viewpoint of the duller of the participants. Gemmy at once becomes a trusted member of Jock's Family, and the focus for every evil fantasized, imagined, or counterfeited by others.
The storyline must be left for the book; however one experience shared by Jock and Gemmy is of note. Gemmy treated like the savage he is not, routinely stays several steps ahead of those who attempt to exploit him to gain knowledge of his tribe, and then extinguish them. Far from being intellectually inept, he combines the street smarts of the former London Urchin, with the practical knowledge of sixteen years of learning to live in harmony with the same land the settlers come to conquer. He becomes a harmless, productive and trustworthy part of Jock's Family if not the community.
Gemmy knows his own heart, and those he has come to live amongst. He is under no illusions as to how he is viewed, or how he sees the world. Jock goes through a major reassessment of what he thought he was, as events build around Gemmy. The Author explores in a thoughtful manner what our thoughts are made of, how they change, and whether it is we that change, or our views of others that change us.
The book is filled with smaller observations that are material for contemplation. The loneliness of settling a new land is a reality, but when the Author takes one player and has her ponder the thought of being the first dead to be buried here as well, and the loneliness of knowing no family that has gone before, no one to join in the new resting place, is beyond poignant.
Another great piece of work from this Author.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Simply the most beautiful depiction of early Australia
It would have taken a lot of courage to leave one's home, one's country in mid-nineteenth century Scotland and set sail for another land. Read more
Published on 24 Mar 2010 by Mick Read
Language at the Heart
Remembering Babylon (1993) explores the balance between settler and indigenous traditions in very interesting ways. Read more
Published on 31 Mar 2008 by EnglishStudies
The return of White Man-Child's Return to His Own Language
Malouf doesn't need much introduction, in all truth, the fairest comment one can make is "read him." With that said and in the spirit of contradiction, here is why I believe... Read more
Published on 27 Jun 2004 by Juan Mobili
How civilized is "civilization"?
Setting this book in the mid-1800's on the nearly uninhabited north coast of Australia provides David Malouf with plenty of leeway to explore some of his favorite themes. Read more
Published on 23 Oct 2003 by Mary Whipple
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