Questions of Travel

A Novel

Contributors

By Michelle de Kretser

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$11.99

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$15.99 CAD

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  1. ebook $11.99 $15.99 CAD
  2. Trade Paperback $16.00 $18.00 CAD

This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around May 14, 2013. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.

Laura Fraser grows up in Sydney, motherless, with a cold, professional father and an artistic bent. Ravi Mendis lives on the other side of the globe — exploring the seductive new world of the Internet, his father dead, his mother struggling to get by.Their stories alternate throughout Michelle de Kretser’s ravishing novel, culminating in unlikely fates for them both, destinies influenced by travel — voluntary in her case, enforced in his.

With money from an inheritance, Laura sets off to see the world, eventually returning to Sydney to work for a publisher of travel guides. There she meets Ravi, now a Sri Lankan political exile who wants only to see a bit of Australia and make a living. Where do these two disparate characters, and an enthralling array of others, truly belong? With her trademark subtlety, wit, and dazzling prose, Michelle de Kretser shows us that, in the 21st century, they belong wherever they want to and can be — home or away. “It is not really possible to describe, in a short space, the originality and depth of this long and beautifully crafted book.” — A.S. Byatt, The Guardian

Genre:

  • PRAISE FOR THE HAMILTON CASE (2004)

    "Multi-layered and beguiling."
    William Boyd, New York Times Book Review
  • "De Kretser has pulled off something remarkable"
    Laura Miller, Salon
  • "An utterly captivating blend of intellectual muscle and story-telling magic."
    Boyd Tonkin, The Independent (UK)
  • "De Kretser's prose is stunning."
    Lev Grossman, Time
  • "Subtle and mysterious, both comic and eerie, and brilliantly evocative of time and place."
    Hilary Mantel
  • PRAISE FOR THE LOST DOG (2008)

    "A gripping story. . .elegant and subtle. . . .This is the best novel I have read in a long time."
    A.S. Byatt, Financial Times (UK)
  • "Rich, beautiful, shocking, affecting."
    Clare Press, Vogue
  • "Uncannily compelling . . . .De Kretser's daring willingness to let suspense accrue without promising resolution is a worthy echo of Henry James's brilliance."
    Dara Horn, Washington Post
  • "More often than not, de Kretser nails some situation or foible in 20 words or less. . .There is much here that dazzles. . . .De Kretser's writing is as boldly beautiful as ever."
    Alison McCulloch, The New York Times Book Review
  • "De Kretser writes movingly of the sudden attachments and partings that mark her characters' peripatetic lives. And her evocations of place are wonderfully precise... Even as she evokes the pleasures of travel, however, de Kretser wants us to think about its underlying meaning and purpose... She raises profound questions-is the connectedness of modern life an improvement over the rootedness of old? Is any attempt to confront a foreign culture fated to end in dubious simplifications?-but like all the best novelists, she leaves the answers up to her readers." -David Evans, The Independent on Sunday
  • "As surprising as it is ambitious, Questions of Travel is a satisfying journey through the dislocations of contemporary life." -Arminta Wallace, Irish Times

On Sale
May 14, 2013
Page Count
480 pages
ISBN-13
9780316219242

Michelle de Kretser

About the Author

Michelle de Kretser is a Sri Lankan who has lived in Australia for several years. She is the author of the novels The Rose Grower, The Hamilton Case, and The Lost Dog, and she is currently an associate of the English Department at the University of Sydney.

Learn more about this author