One of Australia’s finest writers of memoir and nonfiction, Robert Dessaix, returns with another journey into his past. His writing is highly regarded, particularly 2005’s Twilight of Love: Travels with Turgenev, and this new book, Chameleon, is a similarly artful mix of biography and travelogue: a dazzlingly beautiful reading experience, tightly focused on sexuality and travel.
Dessaix writes with a fun, free-wheeling, excited energy and it’s infectious. “Even today, at 80,” he writes, “I sense a failure on my part to see life as an endeavour rather than a frolic, an endless outing with friends.” He threads together memories from across a long life – he was born in Sydney in 1944, and now lives in Hobart with his partner, Peter Timms – while always remaining rooted in the present.
