The Happy Life: The Search for Contentment in the Modern World, Quarterly Essay 41 by David Malouf

The Happy Life: The Search for Contentment in the Modern World, Quarterly Essay 41

Author: David Malouf

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 ever 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.

'How is it, when the chief sources of human unhappiness, of misery and wretchedness, have largely been removed from our lives … that happiness still eludes so many of us? … What is it in us, or in the world we have created, that continues to hold us back?' – David Malouf, THE HAPPY LIFE

The Happy Life: The Search for Contentment in the Modern World

By David Malouf

In this elegant treatise, David Malouf returns to one of the most fundamental questions and gives it a modern twist: what makes for a happy life?

Published: 03/10/2011

Format: Paperback

ISBN: 9781863955461

RRP: $19.95

Johnno

By David Malouf

Dante and Johnno are unlikely childhood friends, growing up in the bustle of steamy, wartime Brisbane. Later, as teenagers, they learn about love and life amidst the city's pubs and public libraries, backyards and brothels, Moreton Bay figs and tennis parties. As adults, they make the great pilgrimage overseas and maintain an uneasy friendship as they seek to build their lives.

An affectionate and...

Published: 01/09/2008

Format: Paperback

ISBN: 9780143180142

RRP: $22.95

Revolving Days: Selected Poems

By David Malouf

From the groundbreaking Bicycle and Other Poems to the best-selling Typewriter Music, Revolving Days is a resplendent, up-to-the-minute selection by one of Australia's most distinguished poets. Malouf's best poems, with their grace and intelligence, remain among the finest examples of the Australian lyric. This is an essential compendium for all lovers of literature.

Published: 04/02/2008

Format: Paperback

ISBN: 9780702236358

RRP: $26.95

Typewriter Music

By David Malouf

David Malouf's brilliant collection of poems begins with a memory of new love – with 'grace unasked for, urgencies that boom under the pocket of a shirt' – and ends in the intimate territory of the long-familiar where there is no need for words. This volume is marked by an astonishing breadth of intelligence and erudition, yet steps lightly among the objects of our lives and the wonder...

David Malouf's brilliant collection of poems begins with a memory of new love – with 'grace unasked for, urgencies that boom under the pocket of a shirt' – and ends in the intimate territory...

Published: 04/06/2007

Format: Hardback

ISBN: 9780702236310

RRP: $29.95