Novel Wars: David Malouf and the Invention of the Iliad

Abstract

In this chapter, I explore the representation of war in David Malouf’s novel Ransom , published in 2009 but written soon after September 11. What is it that makes this novel, set in ancient Greece during the last days of the Trojan War , an entirely contemporary response to war and the legacies and memories of September 11 ? The novel valorises newness, or invention, as a way beyond certain impasses of difference, particularly in terms of an unexpected and unprecedented response to what might be read as escalating acts of terror. I argue that this exploration of the possibility of an inventive response to war echoes aspects of Derrida’s and Žižek’s responses to September 11 , but that it also stresses the significant effect of an individual mourning and memory in response to war, which in the novel produces the break with custom that Priam feels might allow something new to emerge. Malouf considers the novelty the form of the novel introduces to the representation of war. His understanding of invention as reshaping and repurposing existing ideas is demonstrated in the novel itself as it looks anew at old material. By positioning itself as a reworking of The Iliad, the novel challenges the ways in which war is represented, and what it means to use particular forms to do so.