Olubas, B: Shirley Hazzard: A Writing Life

The definitive biography of Shirley Hazzard, -- one of the great English language writers, author of The Great Fire, The Transit of Venus and Greene on Capri, winner of the National Book Award, the Miles Franklin Award and shortlisted for The Women's Prize for Fiction.


'Hazzard's marvellous, luminous writing I discovered only recently; now I don't know how I ever managed to get along without it' Sarah Waters


Born and raised in Sydney Australia, Shirley Hazzard lived around the world: in Hong Kong; Wellington, New Zealand; New York; Naples and Capri and her writing -- cosmopolitan, richly intelligent, beautiful, questing -- reflects her life. Her body of work is small but the acclaim it attracts is immeasurable, from Colm Toibin to Anne Tyler, from Lauren Goff to Hermione Lee.

At sixteen, she was living in Hong Kong with her family and working for the British Combined Services. She later worked, another desk job, for the United Nations in New York and, briefly, in Naples. Italy -- Capri and Naples -- claimed her heart and after she was married -- she was introduced to the biographer, Francis Steegmuller by Muriel Spark -- they divided their time between Italy and America.

Drawing on diaries, letters, interviews alongside a close reading of Hazzard's fiction -- Brigitta Olubas, herself Australian -- tells the story of a girl from the suburbs 'with a head full of poetry' who fell early under the spell of words and first sought out books and then people who loved books, as her companions. In the process she transformed and indeed created her life. She became a woman of the world who felt injustice keenly; a deep and original thinker, who wrote some of the most beautiful fiction we have about love and longing -- always with an eye to the ways we reveal ourselves to another.


(thumbnail: Collected Stories of Shirley Hazzard)