His Stupid Boyhood: A Memoir

Description

Few Australian writers have delved as deeply as Goldsworthy into the mysterious state of being that is childhood. Now he's applied his fascination with that stage of life to his own, from his bizarre first memories to the embarrassments of adolescence. For all his working life Goldsworthy has been both doctor and writer - not for nothing is he hailed as Australia's Chekhov - and his memoir is a rare insight to a mind charmed equally by literature and science, the rational and the imagined. The small country towns he grew up in gave free rein to the young Peter's intense curiosity, and in the fifties and sixties he ran amok in hilarious fashion. A boy with a mind wide open to the universe but closed to self-knowledge, he came of age with a naive self-confidence that was ripe for the bursting. Comically self-deprecating, unrestrained in its honesty, His Stupid Boyhood is a passport to the lost country of youth, and a beautiful homage to childhood in general.

Peter Goldsworthy grew up in various Australian country towns, finishing his schooling in Darwin. After graduating in medicine from the University of Adelaide in 1974 he worked for several years in alcohol and drug rehabilitation, but since then has divided his working time between general practice and writing. He has won major literary awards across a range of genres- poetry, short story, novels, theatre, and opera libretti. Goldsworthy's novels have sold over 400 000 copies in Australia alone, and have been translated into European and Asian languages. His novels have three times been shortlisted for the NSW Christina Stead Fiction Prize, and twice for the Miles Franklin Award. Three Dog Night won the 2004 FAW Christina Stead Award, and was longlisted for the Dublin IMPAC prize. In 2003, his first novel, Maestro, was voted by members of the Australian Society of Authors as one of the Top 40 Australian books of all time. Five of his novels are currently being adapted for the screen, and two more - Wish and Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam - for the stage. His most recent novel, Everything I Knew, published in 2008, was shortlisted for the Prime Minister's Fiction Prize. A new collection of short stories, Gravel, was published in 2010. petergoldsworthy.com