The Passage of Love

Author(s): Alex Miller

New Fiction

The Passage of Love is a moving novel from one of Australia's most beloved authors, two-time winner of the Miles Franklin Award, Alex Miller. Both intimate and epic, Miller's autobiographical novel begins as the story of Robert Crofts, whose father, after serving in World War II, returns to the family's London home psychologically damaged and abusive. At sixteen, Robert flees his childhood home for the Australian outback, where he works for years alongside Queensland's legendary black stockmen. When he comes to understand that the outback is not his true home, nor is working there his destiny, Crofts moves to cosmopolitan Melbourne. There he meets Lena Soren, who, it soon becomes clear, is the true center both of this story and of Robert's life. Lena is a charismatic, talented, passionate, and restive woman who defies convention in both subtle and exuberant ways. As her and Robert's intimacy deepens, Lena struggles to free herself from the familial demands and social norms that suffocate her. Very much in love, Robert follows Lena to the end of the earth and back again as their relationship nourishes both his artistic aspirations and her ever stronger sense of self. As a saga about a modern country defining itself through experiments in social costume and shifting mores, The Passage of Love is incisive and fascinating. As the story of a man's calling, of a woman's insistence on carving out an unconventional destiny for herself, and of the many, mysterious facets of love, it is unforgettable.  

$32.99 AUD


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  Alex Miller AUD $32.99   Download cover Availability: Not Yet Published   Critically acclaimed, two-time winner of the Miles Franklin award, winner of the Commonwealth Writers Prize and numerous other literary awards, Miller's new work is an exquisitely personal novel of love and creativity. Sitting in a New York park, an old man holds a book and tries to accept that his contribution to the future is over. Instead, he remembers a youthful yearning for open horizons, for Australia, a yearning he now knows inspired his life as a writer. Instinctively he picks up his pen and starts at the beginning...At twenty-one years, Robert Crofts leaves his broken dreams in Far North Queensland, finally stopping in Melbourne almost destitute. It's there he begins to understand how books and writing might be the saving of him. They will be how he leaves his mark on the world. He also begins to understand how many obstacles there will be to thwart his ambition.When Robert is introduced to Lena Soren, beautiful, rich and educated, his life takes a very different path. But in the intimacy of their connection lies an unknowability that both torments and tantalises as Robert and Lena long for something that neither can provide for the other.In a rich blend of thoughtful and beautifully observed writing, the lives of a husband and wife are laid bare in their passionate struggle to engage with their individual creativity.Alex Miller is magnificent in this most personal of all novels filled with rare wisdom and incisive observation.

All of Alex Miller's novels have been critically acclaimed and have won or been shortlisted in all of the major Australian literary awards. He is twice winner of Australia's premier literary prize, the Miles Franklin Literary Award, and is an overall winner of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for The Ancestor Game. In 2015, The Simplest Words, Alex Miller's first collection of stories, memoir, commentary and poetry, was published to great acclaim.Alex Miller is published internationally and his works have been widely translated. www.alexmiller.com.au

General Fields

  • : 9781760297343
  • : Allen & Unwin
  • : Allen & Unwin
  • : September 2017
  • : 234mm X 153mm
  • : Australia
  • : November 2017
  • : July 2020
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : 300
  • : very good
  • : 823.914
  • : English
  • : 1711
  • : Paperback
  • : Alex Miller