Questions of Travel

Thursday, 20 June 2013

The Miles Franklin Award is ‘Australia’s most prestigious literary award’ (and worth A$60,000). This year it went to Questions of Travel, a novel by Michelle de Kretser. It’s Michelle’s fourth novel – her third, The Lost Dog – made the Booker Prize longlist.

Questions of Travel bounces between London, a troubled Sri Lanka and Sydney, where much of the activity takes place in a travel publisher’s office. Lonely Planet, which is in Melbourne, not Sydney, gets a couple of passing mentions, but in fact Ramsay Publishing in Sydney, the fictitious travel publisher, is Lonely Planet. Anybody who has worked there will recognise innumerable clues, including the regular heartfelt spammed plea ‘I’ve lost my favourite coffee mug, if seen please send it back.’ Yes Michelle is another Lonely Planet exile.