Robert Dessaix

The Nation Reviewed
Expert Appetite: The Plight of the Connoisseur
Robert Dessaix
I am in Soups and Tinned Veg at my local Coles supermarket, immobilised by an attack of anomie. Why am I feeling like this? I stare...
More ...The Monthly Essays
Secret Worlds: Damascus
Robert Dessaix
For days I’ve just been mooching around the Old City in a dream, cocooned within its walls, time-travelling through the maze of its gloomy...
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Faraway Tales: Elif Batuman’s 'The Possessed'
Robert Dessaix
I was a small child when I first read Enid Blyton’s The Enchanted Wood. Or was it the sequel, The Magic Faraway Tree? It had a stylish Art...
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Daytime Nightmares: Herta Müller’s ‘The Land of Green Plums’ and ‘The Passport’
Robert Dessaix
We all know the paintings: the floating brides, the fiddlers and farmyard animals. Colours from a palette only glimpsed in dreams. Marc...
More ...On humbug and bullsh#t. Robert Dessaix, Wendy Harmer and Jonathan Green
Robert Dessaix
Part 1 | Part 2Robert Dessaix, Australia’s foremost man of travel and letters, Wendy Harmer, one of Australia's most talented comedians...
More ...Robert Dessaix on Arabesques
Robert Dessaix
Renowned writer and broadcaster Robert Dessaix reads from and discusses his new memoir Arabesques, which features meditations and...
More ...Robert Dessaix (p2) on Arabesques
Robert Dessaix
Renowned writer and broadcaster Robert Dessaix reads from and discusses his new memoir Arabesques, which features meditations and...
More ...Books
Kitchen-Table Candour: Helen Garner’s ‘The Spare Room’
Robert Dessaix
"Somebody somewhere says," Helen Garner says somewhere, "that ‘the urge to preserve is the basis of all art.' Unaware of...
More ...Feeling Frisky: Everywhere is anywhere when you travel these days, whether it's invasions or gardening shows.
Robert Dessaix
The image that first flashed onto the TV screen that evening was of Peter Cundall, the lovable talking garden gnome from Gardening...
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