David E. R. George

After completing his Ph.D. at Cambridge University at the age of 23, David lived in many countries and through many dynamic times - Berkeley, California in the Sixties, China in the 70s, Malaysia, France, Australia… Twenty years at Murdoch University (Western Australia) culminated in a Professorship and Chair at the City University of New York. He speaks French, German and (rusty) Russian and Chinese.

A well-published and respected academic, David has published six books - on Asian theatre and Buddhist thought, and is also a prize-winning playwright who has received grants and commissions from the French and Italian governments, and whose plays have been performed throughout Australia and as far afield as Moscow.*

Together these two quite different forms of writing now enrich his novels, infusing them with the meticulous detail learnt from the rigours of research, as well as an expertise in realising fictional worlds and their characters, the legacy of many years writing for and directing theatre.

His first novel, Eyebabies, was published in 2008 - as a finalist in an international competition organised by Ilura Press (Melbourne). Daan Spijer, (Australian Writer 2008) called it “a book about what makes us human and what it means to be civilised”; Vijay Mishra, Professor of English Literature and sometime chair of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the W.A. Premier’s Book Awards, writes: “Complex, intelligent, eloquent and dazzlingly successful. From the first page on, the novel cannot be put down as the rhythms of the novelist’s prose draw us deep into a world of love, passion and loss. This is an Australian novel with a difference, a must read.”

Alison Samuel of Chatto and Windus called the original How Mao Died “a big ambitious story… its scope and ambitions are admirable;” Charlotte Wasserstein at Houghton Mifflin wrote that it is “a creative and imaginative novel… personal and profound;” Random House rated it “an ambitious, original project.” Betty Schwartz at Hodder and Stoughton agreed that “he writes brilliantly..”

Now rewritten and reissued, it is available as a print book on amazon and on Kindle