People

World class

French magazine Lire recently named Melbourne author-barrister Elliot Perlman one of the “50 most important writers in the world”. And if Perlman himself doubted his own global reach, a German book tour earlier this year changed that. 

“I was a guest at the Lit Cologne, a writer’s festival, and I was walking with the moderator for my session along the river, towards a big barge. I saw this huge line of people and I said, ‘What are they waiting for?’ and she said, ‘That’s for you’. There were 600 people, in winter, lined up on the Rhine to come and hear me. It was astonishing.”

It’s a good time to re-visit the 44-year-old’s debut novel, Three Dollars, which celebrates its tenth year in publication. Currently at work on his fourth book, Perlman shies away from the spotlight that his epic novel, Seven Types of Ambiguity, has brought him. (It was a New York Times notable book of the year and has been translated into numerous languages.) He has accepted the invitation of a Dutch art critic to contribute to a cultural exhibit for the Beijing Olympics, and is shopping around a screenplay based on one of his short stories, with Oscar nominee Stephen Rea (The Crying Game) already attached. Rachelle Unreich