Questions of Travel by Michelle de Kretser

Its effect on the individual is various and unpredictable. I hope that at least some readers of QoT reflect on the ease with which Australians move around the world as tourists and contrast it with the emotional, psychological and physical suffering of other kinds of travellers. M de K: The novel as a form encourages us to experience the lives of others and thereby to reflect on our own lives. JS: What role do you feel the novel (as a form) plays in contributing to the conversation on these issues? I really just wrote about travel because it interested me, since it had played a significant role in my life and because I saw it as central to the modern world. But when I am setting out to write a novel, I never think about whether or not it’s of interest to the public – that would be fatal, I believe. If you had asked me in 2007 whether travel would still be topical in 2013, I would have said yes, certainly, because mobility is integral to and symbolic of modernity. It’s a novel about various kinds of travel and travellers – tourists, asylum-seekers, immigrants, expatriates. M de K: QoT isn’t a novel about asylum-seeking. JS: Could you have anticipated when you began the continuing emphasis of these issues in the public imagination? Topicality is the business of journalists. As for `public discourse’, I never pay much attention to it, least of all with respect to my fiction. M de K: Official policy has clearly taken a turn for the worse with both major parties seeking to outdo each other in coming up with ingeniously cruel ways to deal with asylum-seekers. Given that you started the project in 2007, do you feel that there has been progress in the public discourse on this subject? JS: I’m particularly interested in the ways in which you deal with the themes of repatriation and dispossession in Questions of Travel – obviously a topical subject at a time when asylum seekers are high on the political agenda. What is it about QoT that has struck a chord with so many readers? Literature program officer Joanne Simpson took the opportunity to ask some big questions about this significant book that goes to the heart of what travel means and why we do it. Her previous novels The Rose Grower, The Hamilton Case and The Lost Dog were all very well-received, but it was QoT that really swept the field, winning the 2013 Miles Franklin Literary Award, the 2013 ALS Gold Medal, the 2013 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Fiction, the Premier’s Prize and the Prize for Fiction in the 2013 WA Premier’s Book Awards as well as several shortlistings. Having emigrated to Australia at 14 you could argue that, like many Australians, the question of travel is one that has informed her life. Michelle de Kretser was born in Sri Lanka, where a significant part of her most recent and highly-acclaimed novel Questions of Travel is set.

Questions of Travel by Michelle de Kretser