Chinese Postman

Brian Castro

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English

Giramondo Publishing
01 October 2024

Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945); Australian Fiction

Abraham Quin is in his mid-seventies, a migrant, thrice-divorced, a one-time postman and professor, a writer now living alone in the Adelaide Hills. In The Chinese Postman he reflects on his life with what he calls 'the mannered and meditative inaction of age', offering up memories and anxieties, obsessions and opinions, his thoughts on solitude, writing, friendship and time. He ranges widely, with curiosity and feeling, digressing and changing direction as suits his experience, and his role as a collector of fragments and a surveyor of ruins. He becomes increasingly engaged in an epistolary correspondence with Iryna Zarebina, a woman seeking refuge from the war in Ukraine. As the correspondence opens him to others, the elaboration of his memories tempers his melancholy with a playful enjoyment in the richness of language, and a renewed appreciation of the small events in nature. This understanding of the experience of old age is something new and important in our literature. As Quin comments, 'In Australia, the old made way for the young. It guaranteed a juvenile legacy.'

By: Brian Castro
Imprint: Giramondo Publishing
Country of Publication: Australia
Dimensions: Height: 210mm, Width: 148mm,
Weight: 340g
ISBN: 9781923106130
ISBN 10: 1923106139
Pages: 262
Publication Date: 01 October 2024
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Brian Castro was born in Hong Kong of Portuguese, Chinese and English parentage. He is the author of ten novels, including Birds Of Passage (1983), Double-Wolf (1991), After China (1992), Stepper (1997), Shanghai Dancing (2003), and The Garden Book (2006). Together these novels won The Age Book of the Year Award, the Victorian Premier's Award (three times), the National Book Council Award, the NSW Premier's Award and the Queensland Premier's Literary Award. Castro's novel in thirty-four cantos, Blindness and Rage, won the Prime Minister's Prize for Poetry in 2018. He is also the author of a collection of essays, Looking for Estrellita, and the novella Street to Street, based on the life of the poet Christopher Brennan. In 2014 Castro received the Patrick White Award in recognition of his significant contribution to Australian literature.