On Patrick White's Dilemmas
A Personal Essay
'A brilliantly written, autobiographically structured meditation on Australia’s pre-eminent novelist Patrick White. Karalis’ small volume reflects eloquently on a lifetime of reading, writing, and translating. On Patrick White’s Dilemmas casts a sceptical eye on the grandiosity and hysteria of literary critics and critical theorists. It explores the highs and lows of the twentieth-century novel in a dazzling manner while dissecting White’s singularity: his startling use of language, defiance of fad and ideology, mastery of ambiguity, irony and mystery, quotidian drollness, and complex mythopoetic storytelling. Karalis’ book is remarkable – the most important examination of White’s divine comedy of disturbing human quandaries that has appeared to date.' – Professor Peter Murphy, La Trobe University
Vrasidas Karalis holds the Chair of Sir Nicholas Laurantos in Modern Greek and Byzantine Studies at the University of Sydney. He has translated Patrick White’s Voss and The Vivisector. He is the editor of Modern Greek Studies (Australia and New Zealand). His main publications in English include, A History of Greek Cinema (Continuum 2012), Realism in Greek Cinema (I.B. Tauris, 2017), Recollections of Mr Manoly Lascaris (Brandl & Schlesinger, 2007), The Demons of Athens (Brandl & Schlesinger, 2013), Reflections on Presence (re.Press, 2016), Farewell to Robert (Brandl & Schlesinger, 2023). He has also edited the collections Cornelius Castoriadis and the Project of Radical Democracy (Brill, 2013), Martin Heidegger and the Aesthetics of Being (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008), Power, Judgment and Political Evil – In Conversation with Hannah Arendt (Routledge, 2012).
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