Dark Palace

From Infogalactic: the planetary knowledge core
Jump to: navigation, search
Dark Palace
Author Frank Moorhouse
Country Australia
Language English
Genre Historical novel
Publisher Knopf, Australia
Publication date
2000
Media type Hardback & Paperback
Pages 678 pp
ISBN 0-09-183676-X
OCLC 247939503
823/.914 21
LC Class PR9619.3.M6 D3 2000
Preceded by Grand Days
Followed by Cold Light

Dark Palace is a novel by the Australian author Frank Moorhouse that won the 2001 Miles Franklin Literary Award.[1]

The novel forms the second part of the author's "Edith Trilogy", following Grand Days that was published in 1993; and preceding Cold Light that was published in 2011. The trilogy is a fictional account of the League of Nations, which trace the strange, convoluted life of a young woman who enters the world of diplomacy in the 1920s; through to her involvement in the newly formed International Atomic Energy Agency after World War II.[2]

Plot

A direct sequel to Grand Days and beginning in 1931, the novel traces the private and public lives of an Australian woman Edith Campbell Berry, during her final years as an official of the League of Nations based in Geneva. Berry's crumbling marriage parallels the futility of the League's attempts at negotiated disarmament, though she is reunited with her former lover, a cross-dressing Englishman. Returning on leave to Australia, Berry finds she now has little in common with her homeland, after her years of moving in European diplomatic circles. She remains with the Secretary-General's Office at the half-empty Palais des Nations throughout World War II, while a skeleton Secretariat attempts to continue the peace-time functions of the League. In 1945 Berry accompanies a delegation of senior League officials to San Francisco, in the expectation that they will all have key roles to play in the newly established United Nations. To her humiliation and anger they are excluded from any involvement in the setting up of the new organization. The League itself is dissolved a few months later and Berry moves to Canberra, aspiring to a new career in the Australian Department of External Affairs (Cold Light).

Dedication

"To Jean-Paul and Monique Delamotte, friends and patrons".

Awards

Reviews

  • Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  • Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

References

  1. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  2. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
Awards and achievements
Preceded by Miles Franklin Award recipient
2001
Succeeded by
Dirt Music


<templatestyles src="Asbox/styles.css"></templatestyles>