Background
Hazzard, Shirley was born on January 30, 1931 in Sydney, Australia. Daughter of Reginald and Catherine (Stein) Hazzard.
( From the author of The Great Fire, a collection of stor...)
From the author of The Great Fire, a collection of stories about love and acceptance, expectations and disappointment Shirley Hazzard's stories are sharp, sensitive portrayals of moments of crisis. Whether they are set in the Italian countryside or suburban Connecticut, the stories deal with real people and real problems. In the title piece, a young widow is surprised and ashamed by her lack of grief for her husband. In "A Place in the Country," a young woman has a passionate, guilty affair with her cousin's husband. In "Harold," a gawky, lonely young man finds acceptance and respect through his poetry. Moving and evocative, these ten stories are written with subtlety, humor, and a keen understanding of the relationships between men and women.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0312423276/?tag=2022091-20
( In the words of Time magazine, “A near perfect novel......)
In the words of Time magazine, “A near perfect novel...a small masterpiece” by the author of The Great Fire Passionate undercurrents sweep in and out of this eloquent novel about a love affair in a summer countryside in Italy and its inevitable end. It takes place in a setting of pastoral beauty during a time of celebration--a festival. Sophie, half English, half Italian, meets Tancredi, an Italian who is separated from his wife and family. In telling the story of their love affair, Shirley Hazzard punctures the placid surface of polite Italian society to reveal the intense yearnings and surprising responses in sophisticated people caught up in emotions they do not always understand.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0312423268/?tag=2022091-20
( Only those who keep their wit and affections about them...)
Only those who keep their wit and affections about them will survive the mass conditioning of the Organization, where confusion solemnly rules and conformity is king. As in our world itself, humanity prevails in the courage, love, and laughter of singular spirits--of men and women for whom life is an adventure no Organization can quell, and whose souls remain their own.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0312424221/?tag=2022091-20
( Long out of print, Shirley Hazzard's classic novel of l...)
Long out of print, Shirley Hazzard's classic novel of love and memory A young Englishwoman working in Naples, Jenny comes to Italy fleeing a history that threatened to undo her. Alone in the fabulously ruined city, she idly follows up a letter of introduction from an acquaintance and so changes her life forever. Through the letter, she meets Giocanda, a beautiful and gifted writer, and Gianni, a famous Roman film director and Giocanda's lover. At work she encounters Justin, a Scotsman whose inscrutability Jenny finds mysteriously attractive. As she becomes increasingly involved in the lives of these three, she discovers that the past--and the patterns of a lifetime--are not easily discarded.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0312422873/?tag=2022091-20
(The Transit of Venus is considered Shirley Hazzard's most...)
The Transit of Venus is considered Shirley Hazzard's most brilliant novel. It tells the story of two orphan sisters, Caroline and Grace Bell, as they leave Australia to start a new life in post-war England. What happens to these young women--seduction and abandonment, marriage and widowhood, love and betrayal--becomes as moving and wonderful and yet as predestined as the transits of the planets themselves. Gorgeously written and intricately constructed, Hazzard's novel is a story of place: Sydney, London, New York, Stockholm; of time: from the fifties to the eighties; and above all, of women and men in their passage through the displacements and absurdities of modern life.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0140107479/?tag=2022091-20
( More than twenty years after the classic The Transit of...)
More than twenty years after the classic The Transit of Venus, Shirley Hazzard returns to fiction with a novel that in the words of Ann Patchett "is brilliant and dazzling..." The Great Fire is an extraordinary love story set in the immediate aftermath of the great conflagration of the Second World War. In war-torn Asia and stricken Europe, men and women, still young but veterans of harsh experience, must reinvent their lives and expectations, and learn, from their past, to dream again. Some will fulfill their destinies, others will falter. At the center of the story, a brave and brilliant soldier finds that survival and worldly achievement are not enough. His counterpart, a young girl living in occupied Japan and tending her dying brother, falls in love, and in the process discovers herself. In the looming shadow of world enmities resumed, and of Asia's coming centrality in world affairs, a man and a woman seek to recover self-reliance, balance, and tenderness, struggling to reclaim their humanity. The Great Fire is a story of love in the aftermath of war by "purely and simply, one of the greatest writers working in English today." (Michael Cunningham) The Great Fire is the winner of the 2003 National Book Award for Fiction.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0312423586/?tag=2022091-20
( More than twenty years after the classic The Transit of...)
More than twenty years after the classic The Transit of Venus, Shirley Hazzard returns to fiction with a novel that in the words of Ann Patchett "is brilliant and dazzling..." The Great Fire is an extraordinary love story set in the immediate aftermath of the great conflagration of the Second World War. In war-torn Asia and stricken Europe, men and women, still young but veterans of harsh experience, must reinvent their lives and expectations, and learn, from their past, to dream again. Some will fulfill their destinies, others will falter. At the center of the story, a brave and brilliant soldier finds that survival and worldly achievement are not enough. His counterpart, a young girl living in occupied Japan and tending her dying brother, falls in love, and in the process discovers herself. In the looming shadow of world enmities resumed, and of Asia's coming centrality in world affairs, a man and a woman seek to recover self-reliance, balance, and tenderness, struggling to reclaim their humanity. The Great Fire is a story of love in the aftermath of war by "purely and simply, one of the greatest writers working in English today." (Michael Cunningham) The Great Fire is the winner of the 2003 National Book Award for Fiction.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0312423586/?tag=2022091-20
Hazzard, Shirley was born on January 30, 1931 in Sydney, Australia. Daughter of Reginald and Catherine (Stein) Hazzard.
Student, Queenwood School, Sydney, 1946.
With Special Operations Intelligence, Hong Kong, 1947—1948, United Kingdom High Commissioner Office, Wellington, New Zealand, 1949—1950, United Nations (general service category), New York City, 1952—1961. Boyer lecturer, Australia, 1984, 88.
( From the author of The Great Fire, a collection of stor...)
( Long out of print, Shirley Hazzard's classic novel of l...)
( More than twenty years after the classic The Transit of...)
( More than twenty years after the classic The Transit of...)
( Only those who keep their wit and affections about them...)
(The Transit of Venus is considered Shirley Hazzard's most...)
( In the words of Time magazine, “A near perfect novel......)
Author: Cliffs of Fall and other stories, 1963. (novels) The Evening of the Holiday, 1966, People in Glass Houses, 1967, The Bay of Noon, 1970, The Transit of Venus, 1980, History Defeat of an Ideal: A Study of the Self Destruction of the United Nations, 1973, History Countenance of Truth, 1990. (novel) The Great Fire, 2003 (National Book award, 2003).(memoir) Greene on Capri, 2000.
Trustee New York Society Library. Fellow Royal Society Literature. Member American Academy of Arts and Letters (William Dean Howells medal 2005), National Arts and Science, Century Club New York City.
Married Francis Steegmuller, December 22, 1963 (deceased October 1994).