Manoly lascaris

Patrick Victor Martindale White (28 May 1912 – 30 September 1990), was an Australian author. He is an important English-language novelist of the 20th century. From 1935 until his death, he published 12 novels, two short-story collections and eight plays.

White's fiction uses humour, ornate prose, shifting narrative vantage points and a stream of consciousness technique. In 1973, he got the Nobel Prize in Literature. He was the only Australian citizen^[1][2] with the prize until the South African-born J. M. Coetzee became an Australian citizen in 2006. His novel The Vivisector was close to winning the Lost Man Booker Prize in 2010.

White was made Australian of the Year for 1974.^[3]

Patrick White and Christina Stead are widely called the most important Australian novelists of the 20th century.

Works

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Novels

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Short story collections

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Plays

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• Bread and Butter Women (1935) Unpublished.
• The School for Friends (1935) Unpubli
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  Did you know that 2023 marks the 50th anniversary of Patrick White winning the Nobel Prize in Literature, the first Australian writer to be so honoured?

  Until last week, neither did I. Nor did many of my fellow academics. As a lover of White’s writing, I was shocked by my own lack of awareness, which was quickly overshadowed by the realisation that seemingly everyone had overlooked it. Surely someone must have commented?

  As far as I have been able to find, there has been one article back in autumn by Barnaby Smith in the NSW State Library’s magazine Openbook and few Twitter posts similarly aghast at the neglect.

  By contrast, you are more than likely aware that this October marks the 50th anniversary of the Sydney Opera House, officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II two days after the announcement of White’s award. As David Marr recounts in his biography of White, when the photographers crowding around White’s house were asked if they could come back in the morning, they replied: “We have to do the Queen in the morning.”

  Cultural cringe

  When I first began thinking about wr

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  Patrick White

  Australian writer (1912–1990)

  For other people named Patrick White, see Patrick White (disambiguation).

  Patrick Victor Martindale White (28 May 1912 – 30 September 1990) was an Australian novelist and playwright who explored themes of religious experience, personal identity and the conflict between visionary individuals and a materialistic, conformist society. Influenced by the modernism of James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf, he developed a complex literary style and a body of work which challenged the dominant realist prose tradition of his home country, was satirical of Australian society, and sharply divided local critics. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1973, the only Australian to have been awarded the literary prize.^{[note 1]}

  Born in London to affluent Australian parents, White spent his childhood in Sydney and on his family's rural properties. He was sent to an English public school at age 13 and went on to read modern languages at Cambridge. On his graduation in 1935, he embarked on a literary career. His first pub