An Elegant Young Man

An Elegant Young Man was shortlisted for the 2014 ALS Gold Medal. For a long time, Western Sydney has been the political flash-point of the nation, but it has been absent from Australian literature. Luke Carman's first book of fiction changes all that: a collection of monologues and stories which tells it how it is on Australia's cultural frontier.

His young, self-conscious but determined hero navigates his way through the complications of his divorced family and an often perilous social world, with its Fobs, Lebbbos, Greeks, Serbs, Grubby Boys, and scumbag Aussies—friends and enemies. He loves Whitman and Kerouac, Leonard Cohen and Henry Rollins, is awkward with girls, and has an invisible friend called Tom. His neighbour Wessam tells him he should write a book called How to Be Gay—and now he has.

Carman's style is packed with thought and energy: it captures the voices of the street and conveys fear and anger, beauty and affection, with restless intensity. An Elegant Young Man is street poetry for contemporary Sydney, and it demonstrates what is most exciting and innovative in Australia's emerging writers.

- Sydney Morning Herald review

Winner of the UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing at the 2015 NSW Premier's Literary Awards.