Patrick White

Nobel Prize in Literature 1973

Australian writer Patrick Victor Martindale White was born on May 28, 1912, in London. Coming from a family of Australian cattle ranchers, he moved with his parents to Sydney just six months after his birth.
A sickly child, suffering from asthma attacks, Patrick was sent to a school far from the city. His illness kept him away from the exhausting company of other children, so he took refuge in books, especially poetry and theater. At the age of thirteen, he was sent to England to attend a school in Cheltenham, where he remained as a boarder until, in 1918, his parents decided to take him on a trip through Scandinavia. He brought back a great appreciation for authors such as Ibsen and Strindberg.
In 1930 he returned to Australia, where he worked for two years as a farmhand, writing in his spare time. At the end of that period he returned to England, enrolling at King's College, Cambridge University, as a student of French and German Literature. Obtaining his degree in 1935, he was helped by his father to establish himself in London as an aspiring writer.
In 1939, after several unsuccessful attempts, he managed to publish his first novel. Happy ValleyIn 1940, while writing The Living and the Dead (1941), Patrick White was recruited by the Royal Air Force, which he served with the rank of Secret Service officer, assigned to missions in the Middle East and Greece. During this period he met Manoly Lascaris, a Greek citizen with whom he returned to Australia and began living in a stable relationship.
In 1955 it emerged The Tree of Man, a work that tells the story of Stan Parker, a young farmer who founds a dynasty on a farm that ends up being absorbed by the city. The year 1957 marked the achievement of international success with the publication of Voss, a highly symbolic novel based on true events, recounted the proverbial desert crossing undertaken by Johann Voss, an eccentric and Nietzschean German. The emergence of works such The Solid Mandala (1966) and The Twyborn case (1979) confirmed White's special talent for understanding the human soul.
In the 1970s, Patrick White became a major activist for Aboriginal rights, environmental protection, and tolerance towards homosexuality.
He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1973.
She died in Sydney on September 30, 1990, after a prolonged illness.

Patrick White. In Infopédia. Porto: Porto Editora, 2003-2011.