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Vendor
Fritz Agency
Christian Dittus
Original language
English

THE HAPPY LIFE

David Malouf

The Search for Contentment in the Modern World

In the first "Quarterly Essay" for 2011, David Malouf returns to one of the most fundamental questions and gives it a modern twist: what makes for a happy life?

With grace and profundity, Malouf discusses new and old ways to talk about contentment and the self. In considering the happy life - what it is, and what makes it possible - David Malouf returns to the "highest wisdom" of the classics, looks at how, thanks to Thomas Jefferson's way with words, happiness became a "right", and examines joy in the flesh as depicted by Rubens and Rembrandt. In a world become even larger and impersonal, he finds happiness in an unlikely place. This is an essay to savour and reflect upon by one of Australia's greatest novelists.

In a career spanning four decades, David Malouf has written poetry, essays, fiction and opera libretti. In 1996, his novel "Remembering Babylon" was awarded the first international IMPAC Dublin literary award.
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Book

Published 2011-10-01 by Black Inc.

Comments

USA: Knopf; Italy: Sperling & Kupfer; Portugal: WMF Martins Fontes; UK: Chatto & Windus;

The Happy Life brilliantly provokes thought and invites debate. David Malouf makes a fascinating and valuable contribution to that essential precondition of happiness: namely, the task of understanding what it is. - AC Grayling