Morris Lurie (b. 1938) is a Melbourne-based author of fiction. Born to Jewish parents who had fled Poland before World War 2, he studied architecture and worked in advertising before turning to writing full-time. His first novel, Rappaport, was published in 1966, during eight years he spent overseas. He has since published more than thirty books including The London Jungle Adventures of Charlie Hope (1968), Seven Books for Grossman (1983) Flying Home (1978), selected by the National Book Council as one of the ten best Australian books of its decade, and the Bicentennial Award-winning autobiography, Whole Life (1987). His adult fiction combines Bellow/Roth-style 'Jewish humour' with an interest in cultural and emotional alienation; as he has remarked, they are 'funny on the surface, but what I'm talking about is not really funny'. Amongst his several books for children is the popular Twenty-Seventh Annual African Hippopotamus Race (1969). Often published in the Australian journals Meanjin and Quadrant, many of his short stories have also appeared in overseas publications including The New Yorker, Punch and the Times of London.
