Event and Ticketing Details
Dates & Times
Thursday 16 April
12:45 PM - 1:45 PM
Amanda Lohrey is the literary force behind novels such as Camille’s Bread, Vertigo and The Morality of Gentlemen, and the multi-award-winning short story collection Reading Madame Bovary. She’s also a noted political essayist, having written (separately) about the influence of The Greens and Christianity on Australian governance.
In her first full-length novel in a decade, A Short History of Richard Kline, Lohrey explores the eponymous character’s quest to resolve the ‘divine discontent’ he’s suffered since childhood.
Richard Kline has always felt the absence of something in his life, and growing into middle age, he finds himself increasingly haunted by boredom and anger. Then, a profoundly confronting experience sets him on an unwitting spiritual quest. Richard’s logical, cynical personality enters a reluctant reinvention – one which takes him through a world of medicines and alternative therapies to the guidance of a guru, tackling no less ambitious a topic than the meaning of life.
Lohrey will discuss her complex and ambitious exploration of mysticism and masculinity in a lunchtime conversation at the Wheeler Centre.
Featuring
Amanda Lohrey
Amanda Lohrey is the author of several acclaimed novels, including the award-winning Camille’s Bread, as well as Vertigo, The Philosopher’s Doll and The Morality of Gentlemen.
She has also written two Quarterly Essays, Groundswell and Voting for Jesus. Reading Madame Bovary, her first collection of short fiction, was published in September 2010 by Black Inc.
Aviva Tuffield
Aviva Tuffield is a publisher at University of Queensland Press. She has worked in publishing for almost 20 years, mainly as an editor. She was previously a publisher at Black Inc., at Affirm Press, and associate publisher at Scribe Publications, where she was responsible for building an Australian fiction list.
Before that, she was Deputy Editor at Australian Book Review. She was the co-founder and inaugural executive director of the Stella Prize.