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TITLE INFORMATION SHEET

TITLE

AS I WAS SAYING
AUTHOR

A NEW COLLECTION OF ESSAYS FROM AN INTERNATIONALLY ACCLAIMED WRITER.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Robert Dessaix
RIGHTS HELD

World
FORMAT

As I Was Saying is a swirling conversation with the reader on everything from travel to dogs and cats, from sport and swearing to the pleasures of idleness. Punctuated at regular intervals by talks Dessaix has given on a wide range of subjects, as well as by some of his most incisive journalism, the conversation invites the reader to join a leisurely guided tour of his chamber of curiosities, featuring pieces collected all over the globe from across the centuries. Whether writing home from Vladivostock or Damascus, discussing what makes for good conversation or thinking aloud about the paintings, poems and books he loves, Dessaix always writes with an intimacy and attentiveness that beguile, entertain and make his readers eager for new discoveries.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR

215 x 153 mm 256pp

IMPRINT

Vintage Australia
PUB DATE

March 2012

Robert Dessaix is a writer, translator, broadcaster and occasional essayist. From 1985 to 1995, after teaching Russian language and literature for many years at the Australian National University and the University of New South Wales, he presented the weekly Books and Writing programme on ABC Radio National. In more recent years he has also presented radio series on Australian public intellectuals and great travellers in history, as well as regular programs on language. His best-known books, all translated into several European languages, are his autobiography A Mothers Disgrace, the novels Night Letters and Corfu, a collection of essays and short stories (And So Forth) and the travel memoirs Twilight Of Love and Arabesques. PRAISE FOR ROBERT DESSAIX A Mothers Disgrace offers a compelling read and plenty of material to reflect upon at length. And its value is not one whit diminished for its being almost a decade old. A Mothers Disgrace reviewed by Sea Of Faith In Australia Inc. At first glance I thought this novel was just a collection of travel writings but it is so much more. It is a meditation on life and deaths and travel as metaphor for escaping. Twilight of Love: Travels with Turgenev reviewed by Goodreads Dessaix, is an Australian writer, scholar and radio presenter, but this enchanting memoir of his search for the soul of Russian writer Turgenev (18181883) could raise his profile . . . While the problem of irrational love in a world of reason is the dominant theme, Dessaixs work explores much more: Russian theology, the experience of being far away and therefore barbarian in European eyes, the modern confusion of the erotic with the sexual, and of course, the problem of death. Twilight of Love: Travels with Turgenev reviewed by Publishers Weekly