Randolph Stow: Contents page

Randolph Stow (b.1935) was born at Geraldton in Western Australia, and attended the University of Western Australia. Stow tutored in English at the University of Adelaide, studied Anthropology, worked on a mission in the far north of Western Australia, and as assistant to the Government Anthropologist of Papua New Guinea. Since 1969 he has mainly lived in Suffolk, though he has travelled widely in Europe, North America and Asia. His first novel was A Haunted Land (1956), and he has gone on to focus more on fiction that poetry, writing the following novels: The Bystander, To the Islands, Tourmaline, The Merry-Go-Round in the Sea, Visitants, The Girl Green as Elderflower, and The Suburbs of Hell. He won the Miles Franklin award for fiction in 1958 and the Patrick White award in 1979. His selected poems titled The Counterfeit Silence was published in 1969.