Fly Away Peter Study Guide

David Malouf, who is of mixed Lebanese and Jewish ancestry, grew up in Queensland, Australia, where he also attended university. After graduating, he divided his time between Australia and Europe, teaching English in a number of secondary and post-secondary institutions. His first breakthrough as a writer came midway through his teaching career, with the 1962 publication of Four Poets—a volume of poetry. Although he largely shifted his focus to novel-writing in the mid-1970s, many critics (as well as Malouf himself) consider his early experiences as a poet key to his compact and lyrical style as a writer of prose. In 1978, Malouf published his second novel—the widely acclaimed An Imaginary Life—and subsequently left his position at the University of Sydney to pursue writing full-time. In all, Malouf has written nine novels and multiple other works, including poetry and short story collections, essays, and even the librettos for several operas.

In Fly Away Peter, Jim Saddler fights in World War I. Given that he hails from Australia and that all the other soldiers in his company are his countrymen, he’s presumably a member of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC). Originally formed in 1914, the corps dispatched (along with other companies) to the Ottoman Empire in 1915 before retreating after an unsuccessful attempt to win control of Constantinople. At this point, ANZAC went to Egypt and split into separate divisions. In 1916, they went to France and fought in the trenches of the Western Front. This is the period that Jim Saddler must have joined the military, since he doesn’t go to Turkey or Egypt in the novel. As such, readers know that Jim came into World War I two years before its conclusion, which took place in 1918.

Because of its wartime setting, David Malouf’s novel The Great World is reminiscent of Fly Away Peter. Whereas Fly Away Peter takes place during World War I, The Great World is set during World War II. Nevertheless, both books focus on the nature of friendship in trying circumstances and interrogate what it takes to survive—both physically and emotionally—through violent conflict. It’s clear that Malouf is interested in writing about war, as made evident by the fact that Ransom, one of his most revered works, retells a portion of Homer’s The Iliad, which is about the Trojan War. In terms of more recent literature, Fly Away Peter fits in with a number of works about World War I, including R.C. Sherriff’s Journey’s End, which depicts trench warfare in a similar fashion.