Novel
Seven Poor Men of Sydney
Christina Stead · 1934
Synopsis
In Sydney in the twenties, a failing printing works keeps a few men in poor living: Gregory Chamberlain, the boss, who has not paid his workers for months, Joseph Baguenault, a poor Catholic printer, the young Jewish intellectual Baruch Mendelssohn and Tom Withers, who dreams of taking over the business. Michael Baguenault, Joseph's cousin, back from the war with shattered nerves, does not know what to do with his life and joins a circle of young socialists; his sister Catherine is active among the communists. The book moves forward without a sustained plot, through monologues.
Context
Written in Europe and first titled Death in the Antipodes, the novel appeared in 1934, the first by its author. Without a conventional plot, made up of monologues and portraits, it foreshadows, according to the Research Starters database, the manner of her following books. It was reissued in Australia by Angus and Robertson, in 1981 and then in 1990. Its author, long better read outside her country, was refused an Australian prize in 1967 because she no longer lived there, and on her return, in 1974, received the first Patrick White Award.
Who it is for
A teeming novel in English, without a guiding thread, with long monologues; no French translation.
Prizes and reception
The Bulletin praised its remarkable virtuosity in 1934; the New Yorker, in 1935, found it disappointing.
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