The Great World is a 1990 Miles Franklin literary award-winning novel by the Australian author David Malouf.

Synopsis

It is an epic novel telling the story of two Australians during the turmoil of World War I; and their imprisonment by the Japanese during World War II.

Critical reception

Marion Halligan in The Canberra Times noted that a "paradox that runs through the novel is the idea of weight, and of lightness. The weight of gravity that keeps you in place and makes you belong, the weight of responsibility, of experience as a load of ballast taken on, the mysterious lightness of an unborn baby that seems to offer his mother her true weight in the world, or the premonition of death that combines bird-like flight with the plummeting of a stone."

Awards