Robert Dessaix
Robert Dessaix is an insightful observer of characters, places and cultures, and he is known for interweaving these elements in beautifully crafted prose.
Robert Dessaix is a renowned Melbourne broadcaster, cultural commentator, essayist and author. His best-selling novel, Night Letters (Picador, Australia, 1997) was published to great success in Australia, the U.K. and the U.S.A. as well as being translated into German, French, Italian, Dutch, Finnish and Portuguese. One of the most admired of all Australian novels, Night Letters' recent stage adaptation drew a new round of rave reviews. This was followed by Corfu, published by Picador in Australia, 2001 and by Scribners in the UK and in the Netherlands by Muelenhoff.
A love of the Russian language has led to his lifelong interest and engagement with that nation's culture and literature. Dessaix learned Russian as a young man in the 1960s. He attended Moscow State University where he translated Dostoyevsky's Poor Folk. Dessaix's latest novel, Twilight of Love (Picador, Australia, 2004) recounts the hidden life of one of Russia's most famous writers, Ivan Turgenev (1818-1883).
A friend of Flaubert, Dostoyevsky and Henry James, Turgenev's novels were partially responsible for the freeing of the serfs. Over the course of his own 40-year investigation, Robert Dessaix has come to see Turgenev's life and work as illustrating a turning point in Russian history. For Dessaix, Turgenev represents the moment the Romantic became the Modern, the moment love became sex, and sex became a commodity. Published in 2004 by Picador in Australia, Twilight of Love was also published in the UK by Simon and Schuster and in the US by Shoemaker and Hoard.
For many years Robert Dessaix was the presenter of the ABC Radio National’s Books and Writing program. His autobiography, A Mother's Disgrace, was published by HarperCollins in 1994.
Dessaix is currently working on a book based on the Nobel Prize winning author André Gide.
Contact: Australian Literary Management
www.austlit.com/