Romulus My Father Text Classics

Download or read book Romulus, My Father written by Raimond Gaita and published by Text Publishing. This book was released on 1999-09-01 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 1998 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Non-Fiction, Romulus, My Father is an iconic and deeply loved book. Romulus Gaita fled his home in his native Yugoslavia at the age of thirteen, and came to Australia with his young wife Christina and their infant son Raimond soon after the end of World War II. Tragic events were to overtake the boy's life, but Raimond Gaita has an extraordinary story to tell about growing up with his father amid the stony paddocks and flowing grasses of country Australia. Written simply and movingly, Romulus, My Father is about how a compassionate and honest man taught his son the meaning of living a decent life. It is about passion, betrayal and madness, about friendship and the joy and dignity of work, about character and fate, affliction and spirituality. No one will read this wonderful book without an enhanced sense of the possibilities of being alive. 'I know of no other book where the love between father and son has been more beautifully expressed.' Robert Manne

Download or read book After Romulus written by Raimond Gaita and published by Text Publishing. This book was released on 2011-08-29 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'People have often asked me how I survived my childhood reasonably sane. They think it was because my father and Hora loved me deeply and that I never doubted it. But as much as, perhaps more than that, it was the fact that I came to see the world in the light that my father’s goodness cast upon it.' Raimond Gaita In 1998, Raimond Gaita’s Romulus, My Father was first published—the story of his father who came to Australia from Europe with his young wife Christine and their four-year-old son after the end of the Second World War. In the isolated landscape of country Victoria, Christine succumbed to mental illness, and a series of tragedies befell the family. Described as ‘a profound meditation on love and death, madness and truth, judgment and compassion’, Romulus, My Father became an instant classic. Now, thirteen years later, and four years after the release of the film, Raimond Gaita has put together this collection in which he reflects on the writing of the book, the making of the film, his relationship to the desolate beauty of the central Victorian landscape, the philosophies that underpinned his father’s relationship to the world and, most movingly, the presence and absence of his mother and his unassuaged longing for her.

Download or read book The Philosopher's Dog written by Raimond Gaita and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-10-04 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this beautifully written book Raimond Gaita tells inspirational, poignant, sometimes funny but never sentimental stories of the dogs, cats and cockatoos that lived and died within his own family. He asks fascinating questions about animals: Is it wrong to attribute the concepts of love, devotion, loyalty, grief or friendship to them? Why do we care so much for some creatures but not for others? Why are we so concerned with proving that animals have minds? Reflecting on these questions, and drawing on the ideas of Descartes, Wittgenstein and J.M. Coetzee, Gaita pleads that we ask ourselves what it means to be creatures of ‘flesh and blood.’ He discusses mortality and sexuality, the relations between storytelling, philosophy and science and the spiritual love of mountains. An arresting and profound book, The Philosopher’s Dog is a triumph of both storytelling and philosophy. This Routledge Classics edition includes a substantial new introduction and afterword by the author.

Download or read book Between Sky and Sea written by Herz Bergner and published by Text Publishing. This book was released on 2010-06-07 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A group of Jewish refugees are thrown together on board a dilapidated freighter charting a course for Australia. Fleeing terrible scenes of destruction in Europe, they are bound by a deep sense of loss and the uncertainty of their fate. As the ship lists, inner conflicts burst to the surface and romance, revenge, guilt and desperation fill the craft. There's poignancy, drama and an abiding strength of humanity as the passengers' lives play out in this unbearable hinterland between sky and sea. Now, more than sixty years since its publication in 1946, Between Sky & Sea has been resurrected to take its place among Australia's major works of diaspora fiction. Arnold Zable’s introduction highlights the chilling parallels between Bergner’s tale and the sinking of the SIEV X off the Australian coast, giving the reader pause to reflect on the unchanging plight of asylum seekers throughout history and across the globe. Herz Bergner was born in Poland in 1907 and migrated to Australia with his wife in 1938. His first book, The New House, published in 1941, was a collection of short stories about immigrants adapting to life in a new land. Herz Bergner died in 1970. ‘This novel, resurrected from its foreign country of the past, might stand as an epitaph for the 353 men, women and children drowned in 2001 when the SIEV X sank while trying to reach Australia. At the very least, Between Sky & Sea should be required reading for refugee policymakers today.’ Canberra Times ‘Beautifully written with extraordinary insight into the frailties of humanity, Bergner’s tale is as much a version of the past as it is a vision of our present...We can only hope that publishers such as Text continue to salvage the treasury of migrant literature that is no longer in print.’ Australian ‘Bergner’s astute observation of life shows in his sharp psychological dissection of this human cargo and his unflinching assessment of people’s flaws...Bergner writes with such compassion that a reader becomes infected by his characters’ yearnings.’ Herald Sun ‘There’s poignancy, drama and an abiding strength of humanity in this story.’ Australian Jewish News

Download or read book A Common Humanity written by Raimond Gaita and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-01-11 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This profound and arresting book draws on a wealth of examples to paint a provocative new picture of our common humanity.

Download or read book Essays on Muslims & Multiculturalism written by Raimond Gaita and published by Text Publishing. This book was released on 2011 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: September 11 2001 marked a change inAustralian attitudes towards immigrants. The spotlight was on Muslims. This collection of thought-provoking essays looks at multiculturalism's successes and failures in providing a secure, well-integrated, free and fair Australia. Philosopher and writer Raimond Gaita has gathered some of Australia's leading writers in the field to examine an issue that goes to the heart of Australia's identity. Author and lawyer Waleed Aly examines the role that the media has played in anti-Islamic myth-making in popular Western culture. Writer and researcher Shakira Hussein looks at how Australia's immigration policy has changed the cultural landscape. Geoffrey Brahm Levey writes on multiculturalism and terror and Raimond Gaita on 'the war on terror'.

Download or read book Oh Lucky Country written by Rosa Cappiello and published by Sydney University Press. This book was released on 2010-04 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Oh Lucky Country (Paese fortunato) uses first-person point of view to inflate migrant oppression to such absurdist proportions that its swirling narrative boils over into a maelstrom, washing away all migrant clichés. It is a witty, tragi-comic view of Australian society, culture and prejudice. This new edition of Oh Lucky Country, with introductions by Nicole Moore and Gaetano Rando, is a part of the Australian Classics Library series intended to make classic texts of Australian literature more widely available for the secondary school and undergraduate university classroom, and to the general reader. The series is co-edited by Emeritus Professor Bruce Bennett of the University of New South Wales and Professor Robert Dixon, Professor of Australian Literature at the University of Sydney, in conjunction with SETIS, Sydney University Press, AustLit and the Copyright Agency Limited. Each text is accompanied by a fresh scholarly introduction and a basic editorial apparatus drawn from the resources of AustLit. Rosa Cappiello was born in Naples, Italy, in 1942. She migrated to Australia in 1971 with no knowledge of English and no skills and worked in various manual occupations. She published her first novel, I semi negri (The Black Seeds) in 1977 in Italy. In 1982, she was writer-in-residence at the University of Wollongong. She died in 2008 in Italy.