ELEANOR EDWARDS

April 29, 2012

Bridgetown-born author Deborah Robertson recently launched her second novel at the Adelaide Writers’ Week, six years after her highly acclaimed 2006 book, Careless.

Deborah Robertson.

Her second novel, Sweet Old World, is about a man’s experience of not being able to have children.

The book is set on the island of Aran off the coast of Ireland.

Robertson said she hoped the book would allow readers to journey into themselves.

It has already received praise from readers around Australia but is yet to be released overseas.

The novel follows Careless, which was shortlisted for the prestigious Miles Franklin Award in 2007 and has been translated into several languages including Hebrew and Dutch.

Her first book, Proudflesh, won the Steele Rudd Award for the best Australian short story collection in 1998.

Robertson said that awards success had been “a great form of encouragement”.

She has been living in Melbourne for the last four years and says the intensity of that city had affected her writing of Sweet Old World.

Robertson’s longtime friend, eminent author Tim Winton, helped her launch Careless back in 2006.

She met Winton in a creative writing class at Curtin University where she found her passion for writing.

“When I first went to uni I realised I wanted to be a writer, but I’ve wanted to write for as long as I can remember,” she said.

In the next year, Robertson plans to recover from writing the book and start writing a another novel.

Photos courtesy Random House Australia.