Amanda Lohrey

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.