Exploring Suburbia: The Suburbs in the Contemporary Australian Novel By Nathanael O'Reilly

Description

Exploring Suburbia is the first book-length study of suburbia in Australian literature; it addresses a long-neglected and under-examined area within Australian literature, analyzing novels by some of Australia's most important writers from a new perspective, in addition to examining novels previously neglected by critics. Exploring Suburbia provides new insights and perspectives on fourteen Australian novels, several of which are canonical works that have been analyzed extensively by other scholars. This study will lead to a reassessment of the novels and authors under discussion and prompt further research into suburbia in Australian literature. It demonstrates that that the authors who have explored suburbia since 1961 have moved Australian literature in a new direction, away from the traditional focus on the bush and the city, demonstrating that the literal and theoretical space between the city and the bush contains the most interesting and important engagements with contemporary Australian society. Authors examined in Exploring Suburbia include Patrick White, Peter Carey, Melissa Lucashenko, George Johnston, Tim Winton and David Malouf.