HAPPY VALLEY

Set in a village in the high country south of Canberra, HAPPY VALLEY draws its inspiration from Patrick White's own experiences in the region as a jackeroo in the early 1930s. It is a restless and jagged study of small-town life that doffs its cap to Joyce and Lawrence along the way, but gives a prolonged glimpse of literary genius in the making. With its narrative energy and startlingly beautiful evocations of the landscape in which it is set, HAPPY VALLEY is the missing piece in the jigsaw of White's work.

HAPPY VALLEY was Patrick White's first novel. The first and only Australian writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature was just twenty-seven when it came out. It was published in London by Harrap in 1939 and in New York by Viking in 1940. It won the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal in 1941, but after that White never allowed it in his lifetime to be reprinted in English, largely because he feared it might attract a legal action for defamation. He permitted Gallimard to publish it in translation but vetoed any English editions, even after he won the Nobel in 1973. (First editions change hands online for as much as AUD 10.000.)

HAPPY VALLEY garnered praise on publication from the likes of Graham Greene ("one of the most mature first novels of recent years"), V. S Pritchett ("a biting, adroit and sensual talent") and Elizabeth Bowen ("I have read it with the greatest interest, excitement and admiration").