David Malouf (b. 1934) was born of Lebanese and British parents in Brisbane and was educated at Brisbane grammar school and the University of Queensland, where he taught for two years after graduation. He spent the next decade, from 1959 to 1968, in England and Italy, returning to Australia in 1968, where he took a position teaching English at the University of Sydney. His first novel was published in 1975 and was adapted for the stage in 2004. The Great World, published in 1990, won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the French Prix Femina Etranger. Remembering Babylon, published in 1993, was shortlisted for that year's Booker Prize.