Flaws in the Glass

In this remarkable self-portrait Patrick White explains how on the very rare occasions when he re-reads a passage from one of his books, he recognises very little of the self he knows. This 'unknown' is the man interviewers and visiting students expect to find, but 'unable to produce him', he prefers to remain private, or as private as anyone who has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature can ever be. In this book is the self Patrick White does recognise, the one he sees reflected in the glass.

'Another work of art...Flaws in the Glass is austere and ornamental, ignoring conventional chronology, linking associated fragments to create Proustian deviations. A hybrid being emerges of rare perception and acid experience; family, friends, places are landscapes of hell, heaven and purgatory in this Nobel Prize winner's fertile imagination' The Times

'A singularly penetrating act of self-scrutiny, a cold, uncompromising stare into the mirror of an artist's life. There are lyrical passages and there are wryly comic passages, but the overriding impression it leaves is of a man driven by a creative daemon' David Lodge

'As absorbing an autobiography as has been written by a novelist this century' New York Times Book Review

'He records magnificently, helped by a brilliant eye and an unforgiving nature. His descriptions of Egypt, Greece and Australia are immediately evocative reading' London Evening Standard