 First edition | |
| Author | Patrick White |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Mon Mohan |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Jonathan Cape |
Publication date | 1979 |
| Publication place | Australia |
| Media type | Print (hardback and paperback) |
| Pages | 432 pp |
| ISBN | 0-09-945821-7 |
| OCLC | 247822285 |
The Twyborn Affair is a novel by Australian Nobel laureate Patrick White, first published in 1979. The three parts of the novel are set in a villa on the French Riviera before the First World War, a sheep station on the edge of Australia's Snowy Mountains in the inter-war period, and in London in the lead-up to the Second World War. Each part describes a different portion of the life of the protagonist, whose name and gender identity change with each section. Born male as Eddie Twyborn, in Part I he presents as a woman named Eudoxia, in Part II as male Eddie, and in Part III as female Eadith.
The seed of the novel was a reported exchange between the adventurer Herbert Dyce Murphy and his mother, in which the young boy claimed to be his mother's daughter Edith. The mother said she was glad, as she had always wanted a daughter. White heard about this episode from Barry Jones in 1974.[1][2][3][4]
As in many of White's novels, the main focus is on identity; White views his subject from masculine–feminine, colonial–English, rural–metropolitan, and bourgeois–bohemian polarities. The writing has been described as vivid and painterly in its attention to landscape, and remorseless in its critical dissection of social conventions. The novel is a virtuosic display of White's characteristic "wicked" humour.
The Twyborn Affair was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1979, but was removed at the request of the author, that it make way for the work of younger and more deserving writers. This reflects White's refusal, later in life, of all literary awards. He made an exception for the 1973 Nobel Prize in Literature, but sent a surrogate, Sidney Nolan, to Sweden to accept the award on his behalf.