Education
She graduated from the University of Western Australia having studied English and French, has taught English as a second language and is a bookseller.
- Photos
- Works
- Photos
- Works
book
The Golden Age: A Novel
(A Publisher's Weekly Best Book of 2016 Winner of the 201...)
A Publisher's Weekly Best Book of 2016 Winner of the 2015 Prime Minister's Award for Fiction Joan London, author of Gilgamesh, gives her readers an immensely satisfying and generous-hearted story about displacement, recovery, resilience, and love with The Golden Age. Thirteen-year-old Frank Gold’s family, Hungarian jews, escape the perils of World War II to the safety of Australia in the 1940s. But not long after their arrival Frank is diagnosed with polio. He is sent to a sprawling children’s hospital called The Golden Age, where he meets Elsa, the most beautiful girl he has ever seen, a girl who radiates pure light. Frank and Elsa fall in love, fueling one another’s rehabilitation, facing the perils of polio and adolescence hand in hand, and scandalizing the prudish staff of The Golden Age. Meanwhile, Frank and Elsa’s parents must cope with their changing realities. Elsa’s mother Margaret, who has given up everything to be a perfect mother, must reconcile her hopes and dreams with her daughter’s sickness. Frank’s parents, transplants to Australia from a war-torn Europe, are isolated newcomers in a country that they do not love and that does not seem to love them. Frank’s mother Ida, a renowned pianist in Hungary, refuses to allow the western deserts of Australia to become her home. But her husband, Meyer, slowly begins to free himself from the past and integrate into a new society. With tenderness and humor, The Golden Age tells a deeply moving story about illness and recovery. It is a book about learning to navigate the unfamiliar, about embracing music, poetry, death, and, most importantly, life. Awards 2015 Patrick White Literary Award 2015 Kibble Literary Award Queensland Premier's Award for Fiction New South Wales Premier's People's Choice Award
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1609453328/?tag=2022091-20
The Good Parents: A Novel
( A two-time winner of Australia’s prestigious The Age Bo...)
A two-time winner of Australia’s prestigious The Age Book of the Year Award, Joan London’s debut novel, Gilgamesh, was published to rapturous acclaim both in her native Australia and in the United States. Now, London has delivered The Good Parents, a tender and compelling tale of mother love and the harrowing moment when a daughter spreads her wings and vanishes from her parents’ orbit. Maya de Jong is an eighteen-year-old country girl who moves to Melbourne and begins an affair with her new boss. When Maya’s parents, Toni and Jacob, arrive for a visit, Maya is goneno one knows where. Maya, for reasons of her own, leaves haunting clues in late-night calls to her brother at home, carefully avoiding detection by the two people who love her most. Ultimately, to find her daughter Toni will have to revisit a part of her past that she thought she had shut off foreverthe closest she ever came to being a lost girl herself. The Good Parents is at once utterly contemporary and a story as old as humanity itself: a stunning portrait of familial love and how far we can drift apart in the moments between the words we speak.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0802170579/?tag=2022091-20
Joan London
Edit ProfileCareer
London is the author of two collections of stories. The two were published together as The New Dark Age. She has published three novels, Gilgamesh, The Good Parents and The Golden Age.
She was awarded the Patrick White Award in 2015.
2015: Prime Minister"s Literary Award for The Golden Age.
Achievements
-
2015: Prime Minister"s Literary Award for The Golden Age 2015: Patrick White Award 2015: Nita Kibble Literary Award for The Golden Age 2015: Miles Franklin Award shortlisted for The Golden Age 2009: New South Wales Premier"s Literary Awards Christina Stead Prize for Fiction for The Good Parents 2003: Tasmania Pacific Rim Region Prize Shortlisted for Gilgamesh 2002: The Age Book of the Year Fiction Award for Gilgamesh 2002: Miles Franklin Award Shortlisted for Gilgamesh 2002: New South Wales Premier"s Literary Awards Shortlisted for Gilgamesh 1994: Steele Rudd Award for Letter to Constantine 1994: Western Australian Premier"s Book Awards for Letter to Constantine 1986: The Age Book of the Year Book of the Year and Fiction Award for Sister Ships 1986: Western Australia Week Literary Award for Sister Ships.
Works
book
-
The Golden Age: A Novel
(A Publisher's Weekly Best Book of 2016 Winner of the 201...)
-
The Good Parents: A Novel
( A two-time winner of Australia’s prestigious The Age Bo...)
- Sister Ships (King Penguin)
-
The Golden Age: A Novel
