Fly Away Peter was published by Chatto & Windus in 1982. The novella is set in two contrasting landscapes: the bird-rich wetlands of southern Queensland, where Jim Saddler works as a naturalist documenting migratory species, and the trenches of France in 1916-17, where Jim goes to war not from patriotism but from a sense that he should not be absent from the defining experience of his generation.
The first half of the novella is an almost mystical evocation of the natural world: the birds in their seasonal migrations, the patterns of light on water, the complex ecology of the wetlands that Jim observes and records with scientific precision and personal wonder. This world is not merely beautiful — it represents an order, a continuity, a connection to natural cycles that gives human life meaning and context.
The second half destroys all of this. The Western Front is rendered as the absolute negation of everything the wetlands represent: instead of life, death; instead of flight, burial; instead of migration, stasis; instead of beauty, horror. Jim’s sensibility — his attentiveness to the natural world, his quietness, his patience — is useless in the trenches, and he is killed.
Malouf’s achievement is tonal: the prose maintains its lyric quality even in the war sections, creating a terrible discrepancy between the beauty of the language and the ugliness of what it describes. The birds continue their migrations above the battlefield — life goes on, indifferent to human catastrophe — and this continuity is both consolation and reproach.
Collecting Fly Away Peter
First edition (Chatto & Windus, London, 1982): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $60–$150
- Very good/very good: $20–$60