Peter Goldsworthy

From poet and bestselling novelist Peter Goldsworthy, this darkly funny, bittersweet memoir offers lessons in how to live life in the shadow of an incurable illness. My first stray thought—cancer is a gift. I'm lucky to have it. What priceless material for a doctor-writer. What lessons might cancer teach him before it finishes him off? Peter Goldsworthy asks, obliquely. A...

Against the backdrop of Darwin, that small, tropical hothouse of a port, half-outback, half-oriental, lying at the tip of northern Australia, a young and newly arrived southerner encounters the maestro, a Viennese refugee with a shadowed past. The occasion is a piano lesson, the first of many. "I enjoyed Maestro enormously. Besides its thoughtfulness and bright sensuality, it has a...

"I'm not deaf, but I've always felt more at home in Sign. Both my parents are deaf. Deaf as posts. Deaf as adders, deaf as beetles. And proud as peacocks, Deaf Pride long before there was a word, or a sign, for it. I learnt to speak with my hands from birth; there was no other way of reaching my...

Australians mostly live in cities, yet many of our favourite movie characters are working men from the bush. We revere our sporting heroes, yet we prize their larrikin irreverence. Each year we enthusiastically commemorate a battle we lost. What makes us Australian? Why is it so hard to put a finger on what makes us unique? At the beginning of...

Written in an evocative, haunting style, this moving tale of loss and the relationship between parents and child was first published in the collection Little Deaths in 1993. Tailor-made for reading groups, it is a unique publication which includes an introduction by an acclaimed Australian author, an interview with Goldsworthy, and room for note-taking.