Q&A with Michelle de Kretser, author of Questions of Travel

Michelle de Kretser chats with Bronte Coates about her new novel,


As the title suggests, the characters in your book are fascinated with the idea of travel and what it means to society. Do you feel you have any answers on why this fascination is so prevalent?

My best guess is that it comes from a real or perceived lack in our lives. Millions of people leave home because they lack basic freedoms and securities. They travel to escape war or famine or poverty or persecution of various kinds. Then there’s travel as leisure – tourism – which is an offshoot of material ease. But material comfort doesn’t guarantee satisfaction with the way we live. Tourism lures us with the promise of enlarging our lives through encounters with the unknown or with famous sites or with luxury or danger or excellent shopping!

You’ve written about the lives of two seemingly disconnected characters – Laura, a middle-class Australian travel writer and Ravi, an IT specialist from Sri Lanka. Why these parallel narratives?

Ideas of connection and isolation run through the novel. The double narrative structure reflects this thematic interest on a formal level. I hope that one of the narrative hooks drawing readers through the book is: What is the connection between these two lives?

I also wanted to draw attention to the material conditions that govern our lives. Take travel, for instance. It’s relatively easy for Laura to travel: she has the money, and access to passports that carry her with ease across borders. Ravi’s finances are far more modest, and as a Sri Lankan passport holder, he doesn’t enjoy Laura’s privileged status when it comes to being granted a visa. I hope that the parallel narrative structure points readers to some of the very great material differences between Western and developing societies.

Politics plays a role in the novel, and notably in the way it impacts on Ravi’s life. Did you find yourself drawing on your personal experience of immigrating to Australia in writing his story?

I’m pleased to say that my experience of immigrating to Australia, which took place back in 1972, was smooth and peaceful and nothing at all like Ravi’s!

When I was in the early stages of writing this novel, my partner changed workplaces and we moved to Sydney from Melbourne. The disorientation – sometimes pleasurable, sometimes unnerving – that follows when you’re obliged to make a life in a new place did find its way into the book in Ravi’s reactions to Australia and in Laura’s experience of London. For instance, I noticed the hills in Sydney and the suspense they add to landscape, so Ravi does, too. And Laura and I shared a need to personalise a big, strange city; we had to find a hairdresser, discover shortcuts, carve out intimate maps from the impersonal new spaces in which we found ourselves. So the autobiographical moments are there, but they aren’t immediately apparent.

In many ways, this novel felt like a critique of a certain kind of lifestyle where participants subscribe to commercialism and superficial matters. Was this your intention?

I’ve tried to satirise self-serving mythologies. When they manifest themselves in an individual, these delusions are relatively harmless. For instance, Laura’s friend Tracy Lacey is ruthlessly egocentric while sincerely believing that she’s a delightful person. The hypocrisies of organisations are more sinister. At Ramsay, the publishing house where Laura and Ravi work, managers find all kinds of justification for protecting their interests and furthering their careers at the expense of their fellow workers.

*And finally, one for interested readers, do you have a favourite piece of travel writing? *

Broadly speaking, I prefer writing about place to travel writing. For instance, I love The Ancient Shore, a collection of essays by Shirley Hazzard and Francis Steegmuller about Naples. Peter Robb also writes wonderfully about Naples, one of my favourite places in Europe; Walter Benjamin’s essay about the city is another gem. Robert Dessaix isn’t a fan of Naples but always has insightful things to say about travel, as he demonstrates in his latest collection of essays, As I Was Saying.

Questions of Travel

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Cover image for Questions of Travel

Questions of Travel

Michelle de Kretser

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