David Malouf"Malouf wants to retain and insist upon human moral responsibility, if not for what we endure, then certainly for how we make meaning of those events."Carolyn Bliss, "Reimagining the Remembered: David Malouf and the Moral Implications of Myth" (WLT Vol. 74, Autumn 2000)

David Malouf (b. 1934) was born of Lebanese and British parents in Brisbane and was educated at Brisbane grammar school and the University of Queensland, where he taught for two years after graduation. He spent the next decade, from 1959 to 1968, in England and Italy, returning to Australia in 1968, where he took a position teaching English at the University of Sydney. His first novel was published in 1975 and was adapted for the stage in 2004. The Great World, published in 1990, won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the French Prix Femina Etranger. Remembering Babylon, published in 1993, was shortlisted for that year's Booker Prize.
 
Ihab Hassan, Malouf's nominating juror, said of the author, "And right there I saw a glimmer of his gift: wakefulness and precision of feeling, blended in wonder, and a delicacy that can surprise the mystery of creation itself. It was this elusive quality, inward with his poetic sensibility, a quality akin to love, that first drew me to the work of David Malouf" ("Encomium: David Malouf," WLT Vol. 74, Autumn 2000).
 
Malouf's works include the novels An Imaginary Life (1978), Fly Away Peter (1982), and, most recently, Ransom (2009). In addition to his longer works, Malouf has already written many short-story collections, including Dream Stuff (2000) and Every Move You Make (2006), as well as several poetry collections, including Neighbors in a Thicket (1974), Wild Lemons (1980), and Typewriter Music (2007).
 

2000 Neustadt Jurors and Finalists

NEUSTADT PRIZE 2000

JURORS FINALISTS
Cyril Dabydeen (Guyana/Canada) Wilson Harris (Guyana/England)
Ha Jin (China/USA) V. S. Naipaul (Trinidad/England)
Ihab Hassan (Egypt/USA) David Malouf (Australia)
Linda Hogan (USA) N. Scott Momaday (USA)
Helen R. Lane (USA) Juan Goytisolo (Spain)
Carlos Monsiváis (Mexico) Augusto Monterroso (Guatemala)
Mervyn Morris (Jamaica) V. S. Naipaul (Trinidad/England)
Tanure Ojaide (Nigeria) Femi Osofisan (Nigeria)
Kirsti Simonsuuri (Finland) Mirkka Rekola (Finland)
Dubravka Ugresic (Post-Yugoslav) György Konrád (Hungary)