The Happy Life: The Search for Contentment in the Modern World - Hardcover

Praise for The Happy Life

"These musings on happiness by an eminent Australian novelist and poet revolve around the question of why it eludes so many of us...Malouf's prose is as clear as his quiet, unexpected conclusions."
--The New Yorker

"What is happiness, anyway? In this slim volume, the topic is covered...in five linked essays, each considering aspects of happiness, from social to sexual...rich and thoughtful...a useful riddle for midwinter meditation."
--The Boston Globe

"A brief but piercing meditation."
--The Los Angeles Times

"Penetrating...Malouf eloquently weighs the appeal of material goods and well-being against the heft or morality and individual longing for something we can't always articulate."
--Booklist

"Engaging...A slim volume of meditations on the conundrum that is happiness."
--Kirkus Review

"The Happy Life is no self-help book, and David Malouf is not naive enough to suggest he has an easy cure for our persistent angst. But for anyone who wants an intelligent primer to begin the process of asking some of the questions whose answers may relieve it, Malouf offers a useful starting point."
--Shelf Awareness

Praise for David Malouf

"David Malouf is one of our finest writers, a poet with an ear for language that transforms an interesting concept into a classic meditation on the role of chance in each of our lives."
--San Francisco Chronicle

"A richly imagistic writer, philosophical and literary in the best sense."
--The Washington Post Book World

"A first-rate writer---a sensitive historian of the spirit."
--The Wall Street Journal

"[Malouf is] a storyteller of achievement, for whom simple things gracefully become totems for deeper thought."
--The Philadelphia Inquirer

"Malouf's prose is delicate, marvelously alert to the natural world, and endowed with a quality that has one name only: wisdom."
--The Sydney Morning Herald