Patrick White Biography

Patrick Victor Martindale White was an Australian novelist and playwright. He was the first Australian to have been awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. He is considered to be one of the most important English-language writers of the twentieth century. His oeuvre comprises twelve novels, three short-story anthologies and eight plays. Even though White dealt with everything Australian, his vision was not limited to any particular country or period. White’s works show Australia to be in an unpredictable process of growth. He explores the possibilities of violence in such a context. Novels like ‘The Tree of Man’, ‘The Solid Mandala’, ‘The Twyborn Affair’ show his ideas about his native country. He had also written plays like ‘Night on the Bald Mountain’, ‘Season at Sarsaparilla’ which reveal his allegorical and symbolical style of writing. His fiction is postmodern; it makes use of the multiple narrative points of view and the stream of consciousness technique. Patrick White was deeply concerned about man’s sense of alienation from the society and his quest for a purpose amidst meaninglessness. After receiving the Nobel Prize, the writer became a celebrity in Australia - a status that he did not enjoy at all. His last unfinished novel was ‘The Hanging Garden’—a posthumous publication.