12 Edmondstone Street. David Malouf. 1985.

Widely regarded as one of Australia’s finest novelists and short story writers, David Malouf breaks new ground in a remarkable book that combines autobiography with a subtle, almost painterly sense of the ways in which the objects with which we surround ourselves, and the places in which we live, build up our private maps of reality and shape our personal mythologies. He begins by describing, in loving, evocative detail, the house in which he was born and grew up in Brisbane, moving from room to room, always relating the smallest items in it to the life he remembers and his widening perception of the world at large. From there he moves on to describe life in the Tuscan village in which he spends part of every year, and the arrival of an Australian television crew making a film there; his first visit to India, in which he touches on the problems of interpreting and evaluating unfamiliar places; and, back in Australia, a traumatic wartime journey with his father from Brisbane to Sydney.