The Well Dressed Explorer (1962) is a Miles Franklin Award

Miles Franklin Award

The Miles Franklin Literary Award is an annual literary prize for the best Australian ‘published novel or play portraying Australian life in any of its phases’. The award was set up according to the will of Miles Franklin , who is best known for writing the Australian classic My Brilliant Career ...

 winning novel by Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

n author Thea Astley

Thea Astley

Thea Astley was an Australian novelist and short story writer. She was a prolific writer who was published for over 40 years from 1958. At the time of her death, she had won more Miles Franklin Awards, Australia's major literary award, than any other writer...

. This novel shared the award with The Cupboard Under the Stairs

The Cupboard Under the Stairs

The Cupboard Under the Stairs is a Miles Franklin Award winning novel by Australian author George Turner. This novel shared the award with The Well Dressed Explorer by Thea Astley....

by George Turner

George Turner (writer)

George Reginald Turner was an Australian writer and critic, best known for the science fiction novels written in the later part of his career. He was notable for being a "late bloomer" in science fiction . His first SF story and novel appeared in 1978, when he was in his early sixties...

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Plot summary

The novel follows journalist, George Brewster, who moves from city to city, from empty love affair to empty love affair, until he dies. He is married, but faithless to his wife...and is ultimately a "pathetic figure".

Themes

The themes of this novel are common to Astley's novels: "the hurts inflicted inadvertently and deliberately on others, the terrible shallowness underlying the inability to identify imaginatively with others, and the destruction of others and of the self by wrongly conceived actions."