Voss

A towering classic of Australian literature - by the only writer from that continent to win the Nobel Prize - Voss recounts an epic physical and spiritual journey across the outback. The character of Johann Voss is based on a real nineteenth-century explorer, Ludwig Leichhardt, who set out to cross the entire continent of Australia from east to west in 1848 but disappeared in the attempt. With visionary intensity, Patrick White imagines his obsessed protagonist's last journey across the desert and the waterlogged plains of central Australia. This magisterial novel is also a love story, for throughout his ordeal Voss sustains a deep connection to an orphaned young woman named Laura Trevelyan, whose inner life, like his own, is at odds with the world. In language poetic and passionate yet grounded in shrewd, often comic, social observations and naturalistic portrayals of a range of characters including farmers, convicts, employers, servants, and aborigines, White creates both a spellbinding adventure and a myth for our time.