Andrew Peter Riemer (29 February 1936 – 5 June 2020) was an Australian literary critic and author, for three decades the book reviewer of the ''

Sydney Morning Herald ''The Sydney Morning Herald'' (''SMH'') is a daily tabloid newspaper published in Sydney, Australia, and owned by Nine Entertainment. Founded in 1831 as the ''Sydney Herald'', the ''Herald'' is the oldest continuously published newspaper in ...

''. Born in

Budapest Budapest is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns of Hungary, most populous city of Hungary. It is the List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, tenth-largest city in the European Union by popul ...

Hungary Hungary is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning much of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia and ...

, he moved to Sydney with his family in 1947 at the age of eleven. From 1963 he lectured in English at the

University of Sydney The University of Sydney (USYD) is a public university, public research university in Sydney, Australia. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in both Australia and Oceania. One of Australia's six sandstone universities, it was one of the ...

for nearly three decades. Although he was a "fine teacher", he experienced a "sense of estrangement from academic life" due to the changes occurring on Sydney's campus and in his English department in those years. He won widespread recognition for his non-fiction and literary criticism, including the

Pascall Prize The Pascall Prize for Arts Criticism, formerly known as the Pascall Prize and then the Walkley-Pascall Award or Walkley-Pascall Award for Arts Criticism, is one of two annual Walkley Arts Journalism prizes awarded by the Walkley Foundation. The p ...

for critical writing in 1999. Riemer died in 2020 at the age of 84 and was survived by his wife, Nina, a publicist and editor with the Australia Broadcasting Corporation, and his two sons, Nick, a poet and academic in English and linguistics at the University of Sydney, and Tom, a boarding master, rugby coach and chaplain at

Saint Ignatius' College, Riverview Saint Ignatius' College Riverview is an Australian independent single-sex primary and secondary Day school, day and Boarding school, boarding school for boys located in Riverview, New South Wales, Riverview, a small suburb on the Lane Cove Rive ...

Books by Andrew Riemer

* ''Inside Outside: Life Between Two Worlds'', North Ryde: Angus and Robertson, 1992 - autobiography * ''The Habsburg Cafe'', Pymble: Angus and Robertson, 1993 - autobiography and travel * ''The Demidenko Debate'', St Leonards: Allen and Unwin, 1996 - criticism * ''Sandstone Gothic: Confessions of an Accidental Academic'', St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, 1998 - autobiographyJohn Wiltshire
"Fault Lines"
(review), '' Eureka Street'', Vol. 8, no. 10, December 1998, pages 8-41. Retrieved 13 October 2024. * ''A Family History of Smoking'', Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 2008 - autobiography

References

1936 births 2020 deaths Australian literary critics 20th-century Australian writers Writers from Sydney Academic staff of the University of Sydney Hungarian emigrants to Australia {{Australia-writer-stub