David Malouf

Well, I think in the end they took matters into their own hand and managed to get pregnant.

With me.

With you.

So you finally broke the stalemate there in that sense.

So was there reluctance on your mother's family's side to the match?

Rather shockingly and certainly very shockingly to my mother.

And my grandfather broke off relations with them and forbade all his children to go to their wedding.

I mean, I didn't know that until then.

after my mother's death.

Was that because the Lebanese side of the family were Catholics?

They were Catholics and my mother's family were Jewish, yeah.

I was fascinated.

I think all children are fascinated by the accident that brings their parents together and them into existence.

You know, if you know that film called Back to the Future, that's really about a young man's finding his way back to the past and trying to get his parents married so that he will come into existence.

And there's a wonderful Thomas Hardy poem about his parents

Imagining of the first moment in a small Dorsetshire village when his mother in the pew looked up into the gallery where the musicians were playing and caught his father's eye because he was a violinist.

And he knows that this is the moment when he...

was conceived, really, that is, in mind.

I think for anyone in Australia, there is a huge accident, really, that brings their parents together because we all come from such distant places to meet.

And I think in my parents' case, that was a very, very large accident that brought those two people together and me into the world.