SHORTLISTED FOR PRIZE FOR FICTION - 2016 VICTORIAN PREMIER’S LITERARY AWARDS

The latest novel by acclaimed novelist Steven Carroll, winner of the Prime Minister's Award and the Miles Franklin Award. 'And is nostalgia not so much a longing for a place or a time, as a longing for youth itself?' Forever Young is set against the tumultuous period of change and uncertainty that was Australia in 1977. Whitlam is about to lose the federal election, and things will never be the same again. the times they are a'changing. Radicals have become conservatives, idealism is giving way to realism, relationships are falling apart, and Michael is finally coming to accept that he will never be a rock and roll musician. A subtle and graceful exploration of the passage of time and our yearning for the seeming simplicities of the past, Forever Young is a powerfully moving work - clear. beautiful, affecting - by one of our greatest authors. 'This fine novel ... ' Peter Pierce The Australian 'A very fine and significant achievement' Adelaide Advertiser 'There is plenty going on with the story, but it's not the plot that enchants here, it's the prose' Daily Telegraph 'Carroll ... transmutes the grey facts of daily life into light and luminous art.' Geordie Williamson, The Australian 'No Australian author has better evoked the sense of change, the ravages of time, the obligation to self as well as to others. Forever Young is on one level about nostalgia, without ever succumbing to it. There is pathos but no patronage in its chronicling of post-war suburban sprawl and the drift back to the inner city. You can leave the suburbs; you can even leave Australia; you can, in a word, leave home, but home will not leave you. At every turn this exquisitely crafted novel can widen our notion of what it is to be human, then, now and, possibly, later.' Sydney Morning Herald