Robert Dessaix is an insightful observer of characters, places and cultures, and he is known for interweaving these elements in beautifully crafted prose. Dessaix’s books have been translated into several European languages. A full-time writer since 1995, he lives in Hobart, Tasmania.
Robert Dessaix / Author biography
Dessaix is a writer, interviewer, translator and broadcaster. From 1985 to 1995, after teaching Russian language and literature for many years at the Australian National University and the University of NSW, he presented the weekly ‘Books and Writing’ program on the ABC Radio National. In more recent years he has also presented radio series on language, public intellectuals and great travellers in history.
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Publications include the autobiography A Mother's Disgrace, the novels Night Letters (which won the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal, 1997 and the ABA Book of the Year Award, 1996), Corfu, (and so forth) and Twilight of Love: Travels with Turgenev (which won the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards, The Nettie Palmer Prize for Non-Fiction, 2005, New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards, Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction, 2005, and the Margaret Scott Prize, 2007). Arabesques, based on the Nobel Prize winning author André Gide, will be published by Picador in September 2008.
