Romulus, My Father

Teacher Resource Essay

Publisher's synopsis

Romulus Gaita fled his home in his native Yugoslavia at the age of thirteen, and came to Australia with his young wife Christina and their infant son Raimond soon after the end of World War II.

Tragic events were to overtake the boy’s life, but Raimond Gaita has an extraordinary story to tell about growing up with his father amid the stony paddocks and flowing grasses of country Australia.

Written simply and movingly, Romulus, My Father is about how a compassionate and honest man taught his son the meaning of living a decent life. It is about passion, betrayal and madness, about friendship and the joy and dignity of work, about character and fate, affliction and spirituality.

No one will read this wonderful book without an enhanced sense of the possibilities of being alive.

Awards

Winner 1998 Victorian Premier’s Award for Non–fiction
Winner 1998 Nettie Palmer Prize for Non–fiction

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Raimond Gaita

Raimond Gaita was born in Germany in 1946. He is Emeritus Professor of moral philosophy at Kings College London and a Professorial fellow at the Melbourne Law School and the faculty of Arts of the University of Melbourne.

His books have been published in many translations. They include: Good and Evil: An Absolute Conception, Romulus, My Father, A Common Humanity, The Philosopher’s Dog and Essays on Muslims and Multiculturalism (as editor and contributor). A feature film of Romulus, My Father was released in 2007, and won the AFI award for Best Film, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor and Best Young Actor.

"Raimond Gaita's account of his Romanian father's life, first during the rise of Nazism in Europe and then after the war, in various work and finally farming in Australia, shares this outline with many migrant memoirs. Gaita's story, however, is both devastating and wonderful. It's beautifully told, a powerful demonstration of the enormous stress and waste in uprooted lives and, nonetheless, of survival, of achievement, of love."

An ASA Council Member on why this book is in the Reading Australia First 200 list.

Further Details

Author Raimond Gaita

Publisher Text Publishing

Date of Publication 1999

ISBN 9781876485177 (print)

Category Memoir

SCIS number

5467293