''A World of Other People'' (2013) is a novel by

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

n author Steven Carroll. It was the joint winner of the 2014

Prime Minister's Literary Awards The Australian Prime Minister's Literary Awards (PMLA) were announced at the end of 2007 by the incoming First Rudd ministry following the 2007 election. They are administered by the Minister for the Arts.T. S. Eliot Thomas Stearns Eliot (26 September 18884 January 1965) was a poet, essayist and playwright.Bush, Ronald. "T. S. Eliot's Life and Career", in John A Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (eds), ''American National Biography''. New York: Oxford University ...

's poem "

Little Gidding Little Gidding is a small village and civil parishes in England, civil parish in Cambridgeshire, England. It lies approximately northwest of Huntingdon, near Sawtry, within Huntingdonshire, which is a non-metropolitan district, district of Ca ...

" from ''

Four Quartets ''Four Quartets'' is a set of four poems written by T. S. Eliot that were published over a six-year period. The first poem, ''Burnt Norton'', was published with a collection of his early works (1936's ''Collected Poems 1909–1935''). After a fe ...

'' as a starting point. The time is 1941 and London is experiencing

The Blitz The Blitz (English: "flash") was a Nazi Germany, German bombing campaign against the United Kingdom, for eight months, from 7 September 1940 to 11 May 1941, during the Second World War. Towards the end of the Battle of Britain in 1940, a co ...

. Iris, a young civil servant, has volunteered to be an aircraft spotter on a building in Russell Square. Another spotter is Eliot himself, as the building is the headquarters of the publishing house,

Faber & Faber Faber and Faber Limited, commonly known as Faber & Faber or simply Faber, is an independent publishing house in London. Published authors and poets include T. S. Eliot (an early Faber editor and director), W. H. Auden, C. S. Lewis, Margaret S ...

. Late one night the pair witness the crash of a British

Wellington bomber The Vickers Wellington (nicknamed the Wimpy) is a British twin-engined, long-range medium bomber. It was designed during the mid-1930s at Brooklands in Weybridge, Surrey. Led by Vickers-Armstrongs' chief designer Rex Pierson, a key feature of ...

, and Eliot goes on to write his poem utilising this incident. At the initial public reading of the poem, Jim, the pilot of the crashed aircraft, happens to be in the audience and recognises his accident being depicted in the poem.

Notes

* Epigraph:

Our interest's on the dangerous edge of things. The honest thief, the tender murderer, The superstitious atheist...

– "Bishop Blougram's Apology", Robert Browning.

Reviews

* Andrew Reimer in ''The Sydney Morning Herald'' noted that the book is a "highly accomplished novel...eloquent and assured." * Andrew Fuhrmann in '' The Sydney Review of Books'' states: "So clear and careful is the prose in ''A World of Other People'' that it produces a kind of dreamy dollhouse effect, a toy theatre, a meticulously reconstructed model London with a T.S. Eliot doll at its centre, ventriloquially recognisable, albeit speaking in squeaks and stammers. There is also a sense of stillness, a sense of intimacy: a kind of prosaic equivalent to the ''Quartets'' and their air of a closed or self-contained world."Whatnots and Wall Jobs" by Andrew Fuhrmann, ''The Sydney Review of Books'', 26 July 2013
/ref>

Awards and nominations

* 2014 shortlisted Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature — Award for Fiction * 2014 joint winner

Prime Minister's Literary Awards The Australian Prime Minister's Literary Awards (PMLA) were announced at the end of 2007 by the incoming First Rudd ministry following the 2007 election. They are administered by the Minister for the Arts.Richard Flanagan Richard Miller Flanagan (born 1961) is an Australian writer, who won the 2014 Man Booker Prize for his novel ''The Narrow Road to the Deep North (novel), The Narrow Road to the Deep North'' and the 2024 Baillie Gifford Prize for ''Question 7'', ...

's ''

The Narrow Road to the Deep North (The) Narrow Road to the Deep North may refer to: *''Narrow Road to the Deep North'', a 1968 satirical play on the British Empire by the English playwright Edward Bond * ''The Narrow Road to the Deep North'' (novel), a 2013 novel by Australian writ ...

References

2013 Australian novels Prime Minister's Literary Award-winning works Fiction set in 1941 Fourth Estate books {{2010s-WWII-novel-stub