David Malouf has produced a wide range of work including ten novels, four volumes of short stories and eight of poetry, as well as essays and memoirs, a play, and three libretti (most notably for the opera based on Patrick White's "Voss"). An Australian born in 1934, he has lived in Italy and England before settling in Sydney. Sometimes hailed as the quintessential chronicler of Australia, its geographical spaces, stories and voices, he does not like the idea "of being some kind of representative consciousness of the country." He certainly is not: it would be astonishing to find any country in which Malouf's consciousness was replicated. It is unique: his language is powerful, precise and evocative, his world is catapulted into clarity, and the narratives continue to resonate, like chords. His characters seem to exist both in and out of time: "I like that play between movement and stillness in the novel."

He has a poet's sensibility, but there is nothing brazenly poetic about his prose. One is constantly astonished by the vivacity and accuracy of the writing, and it is hardly possible to read a page of Malouf without a smile of delight and gratitude. "Remembering Babylon" (1993) was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the first IMPAC award in 1996. The tale of a young shipwreck survivor rescued and raised by Aborigines, who later makes his semi-articulate way into an uncomprehending white community, it exposes the racism, incomprehension, and poignant, if occasional, kindness of the Scottish settlers of the 1850s. Malouf's "Complete Stories" (2007) will provide many hours of intense pleasure, for his stories – unlike those of many major writers – are not condensed and incomplete ideas for longer works, but totally satisfying in themselves, perfect, whole, intensely memorable.