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The Young Desire It

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Language
  
English

Publication date
  
1937

Followed by
  
Chosen People

Author
  
Kenneth Mackenzie

Country
  
Australia

3.8/5
Goodreads

Publisher
  
Jonathan Cape, London

Pages
  
330

Originally published
  
1937

Page count
  
330

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Media type
  
Print hardback & paperback

Similar
  
A Difficult Young Man, Dancing on Coral, Julia Paradise, The Cardboard Crown, The Unknown Industrial

The Young Desire It (1937) is a novel by Australian author Seaforth Mackenzie. It won the ALS Gold Medal for Best Novel in 1937.

Contents

Plot summary

The novel details a year in the life of its teenage protagonist Charles Fox. He has left his idyllic life on an isolated West Australian farm for boarding school. There he suffers the bullying of his fellow students, uncomfortable advances from his schoolmaster and a difficult scholastic workload.

Reviews

  • Writing at the time of the book's original publication, a reviewer in Brisbane's Sunday Mail wrote: "Writing of rare fineness and delicacy immediately is apparent in this, the first novel of a young Australian...The Young Desire It defies brief description. With all the fine perceptions of the author, the novel is baffling, unsatisfying, vague, yet stamped with a certain genius that might, with more manageable material, produce a memorable work."
  • The novel was reprinted in 2013 as a part of the Text Publishing Text Classics series. Alex Cothren reviewed this edition for Transnational Literature: "These are the bare bones of a coming-of-age narrative, but from them Mackenzie fashions a wholly muscular, hot-blooded portrait of a young man; a psychological profile so precise that every shift in Charles' mood carries the tension of a thriller. It is amongst the best written in the genre, a true Australian classic whose power has not diminished over the generations."

    • Awards and nominations

  • 1937 winner ALS Gold Medal

    • Editions

  • The First edition was published by Cape in 1937.
  • Re-print with Angus and Robertson in 1963
  • 2013 a new re-set edition was published by Text with an introduction by David Malouf

    • References

    The Young Desire It Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA


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