- Published: 28 March 2016
- ISBN: 9780857988294
- Imprint: Vintage Australia
- Format: Trade Paperback
- Pages: 368
- RRP: $34.99
Oliver of the Levant
- Published: 28 March 2016
- ISBN: 9780857988294
- Imprint: Vintage Australia
- Format: Trade Paperback
- Pages: 368
- RRP: $34.99
In a novel that for most of its length, concentrates on intelligently capturing the recklessness and resilience of youth.There are compelling subplots as well. A daring debut, even as [it] makes us wonder where the author might venture next.
Peter Pierce, The Weekend Australian
Jopson's debut is memorable, funny and achingly wrought – delivering us to a place where truth is hard to grasp but anguish real.
Eleanor Limprecht, The Sydney Morning Herald
Debra Jopson’s Oliver of the Levant is another terrific local release. Debra Jopson has worked for many years as a highly regarded Sydney journalist, and this is her first fiction. She has drawn on her childhood and subsequent life experience of Beirut to produce a highly original and perceptive story about a Bondi teenager caught up in the Lebanese civil war in 1969. Oliver's adolescent recklessness and daring, and the complications of his relationships with family (including a fascinating stepmother) are set in a dramatic atmosphere and landscape. Jopson's worldly understanding of the politics and social complexity of this conflict brings the story into sharp relief. It's a daring and engaging debut.
David Gaunt, Gleebooks Gleaner
Original and consuming debut.
The Saturday Paper