Patrick White

Patrick Victor Martindale White (28 May 1912 – 30 September 1990) was an Australian writer who is widely regarded as one of the most important English-language novelists of the 20th century. From 1935 to 1987, he published twelve novels, three short-story collections and eight plays. White's fiction employs humour, florid prose, shifting narrative vantage points and a stream of consciousness technique. In 1973, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "for an epic and psychological narrative art which has introduced a new continent into literature", as it says in the Swedish Academy's citation, the first Australian to have been awarded the prize. White was also the inaugural recipient of the Miles Franklin Award. 2Childhood and adolescence White was born in Knightsbridge, London, to, Victor Martindale White and Ruth née Withycombe, both English Australians, in their apartment overlooking Hyde Park, London on 28 May 1912. His family returned to Sydney, Australia, when he was six months old. As a child he lived in a flat with his sister, a nanny, and a maid while his parents lived in an adjoining flat. At the age of four, White developed asthma, a condition that had taken the life of his maternal grandfather. White's health was fragile throughout his childhood, which precluded his participation in many childhood activitie