Robert Dessaix is an acclaimed essayist, writer of fiction, biography and autobiography. From 1985 to 1995, after teaching Russian language and literature for many years at the Australian National University and the University of New South Wales, he presented the weekly Books and Writing program on ABC Radio National. In more recent years he has also presented radio series on Australian public intellectuals and great travelers in history, as well as regular programs on language.
His best-known books, all translated into several European languages, are his autobiography A MOTHER’S DISGRACE (1994 ); the novels NIGHT LETTERS (1996) and CORFU (2001); a collection of essays and short stories (AND SO FORTH)(1998); and the travel memoirs TWILIGHT OF LOVE (2004) and ARABESQUES (2008). In 2012 he published the collection of originally spoken pieces AS I WAS SAYING, in 2014 the meditation WHAT DAYS ARE FOR and in 2017, THE PLEASURES OF LEISURE. In 2020 THE TIME OF OUR LIVES was published and in 2022 ABRACADABRA was published.
A full-time writer since 1995, Robert Dessaix lives in Hobart, Tasmania with his partner.
CHAMELEON: Cartwheeling from story to story, Dessaix describes an identity in flux: his beginnings as an adopted child named Thomas Robert Jones, his youthful interest in religious thinking, his obsession with all things Russian, his marriage to Lisa and divorce, his discovery of travel. In North Africa he finds different ways of feeling and being, and in Australia he begins his abiding relationship with his partner Peter Timms. At every point he muses on pleasure, art, sex, literature, infatuation, happiness, music, life, death and all the rest. Chameleon is a virtuoso performance of self-revelation, as Dessaix explores how the restless mind takes constant detours to search for what makes life good, a place of wisdom and love.
