David Malouf was born in Brisbane, Queensland in 1934. His father's family came to Australia in the 1880s from Lebanon and his mother's family from London just before World War I. He was educated at Brisbane Grammar School and the University of Queensland, where he taught for two years after graduating. He left Australia aged twenty-four and lived in Britain from 1959-68 where he taught in London and Birkenhead. He returned to teach English at the University of Sydney, where he stayed until 1977. He now writes full-time and lives part of the year in Australia and part in southern Tuscany in Italy.