Introduction by David Malouf

In the late afternoon of a day in February, that hottest of Australian summer months, when a brutal sun stood bronze above the river flats which you may see from the dormitory windows of Chatterton, Charles came to the school with his mother, walking from the railway station to the gates by a private path across a burnt, untidy field, overhung with Cape lilacs that still drooped, dusty and melancholy…In the lower part of his belly fear kicked and pulsed like a child in the womb, ready to be born.

Fifteen-year-old Charles Fox is sent away to boarding school, innocent, alone and afraid. There one of his masters develops an intense attachment to him. But when Charles meets Margaret, a girl staying at a nearby farm for the holidays, he is besotted, and a passionate, unforgettable romance begins. 

Published in London in 1937 to wide acclaim, The Young Desire It is a stunning debut novel about coming of age: an intimate and lyrical account of first love, and a rich evocation of rural Western Australia. It won the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal, and is now back in print for the first time in years with a new introduction by David Malouf.

Read David Malouf’s introduction to this ‘nearly perfect’ novel, published in the Australian.

Praise for Kenneth Mackenzie and The Young Desire It:

‘The Young Desire It is a revelation: a coming-of-age novel from 1937 that deserves a place alongside the classics in this genre. It’s a feverish, fascinating, and surprising look into the mind of an adolescent discovering a sense of self in his quest for love. It’s also a remarkably nuanced and moving portrait of the struggles of those around him to come to terms with their own lives and longings.’

Will Schwalbe, author of The End of Your Life Book Club

‘A hymn to youth, to life, to sexual freedom and moral independence.’

David Malouf

‘A beautifully written story of a sensitive boy’s movement towards adult love.’

 Sydney Morning Herald

'Mackenzie’s prose is at its most sparkling and most sensuous in this novel, and he evokes the hot Western Australian landscape with rare force...[The Young Desire It] is a pastoral charged with the awakening of desire, like spring.' 

 Douglas Stewart

‘The Young Desire It is an extraordinary novel, dazzling in its texture, wholly original in its vision, and heartbreaking in the power and freshness of the story it tells.’

Peter Craven, Australian Book Review

‘The Young Desire It is one of the most brilliant, confident and unusual instances of a Bildungsroman in Australian literature.’

Peter Pierce, Sydney Reivew of Books

‘Sensitive, vital and erotic.' 

Veronica Brady, Australian Dictionary of Biography

‘Kenneth Mackenzie’s apprenticeship novel is astonishing in terms of characterisation, language, its depiction of the natural world and, especially, in terms of a felt or lived narrative…The language throughout is extraordinary…the result is a rolling swell of remarkable turns of phrase, odd constructions, unusual language, and a narrative that builds upon itself until the prose experience engulfs you…If words, cadence and language are your thing, read this book—Mackenzie has rendered it an astonishing experience.’

 Readings Monthly

‘The Young Desire It reminds us there is more than a single line of descent in Australian literature…Mackenzie, who died, penniless and forgotten in his 50s, turns out to be a missing link in our literary tradition. The family tree burgeons at his return.’

 Weekend Australian

‘An extremely impressive work of fiction that well deserves this reissue by Text Publishing…A novel to be welcomed back to Australian literature’s available past.’

Age

‘The novel is distinguished by a rare sensitivity and an impressive ethical and psychological wisdom…its seamless narrative is able to probe the depths and ambiguities of its characters’ personalities and lives.'

SMH/Canberra Times

‘This is a story of sexual awakening − the 'unquenchable thirst’ and ‘first springing desire’ of the young, and of another desire − the desire of adults to thwart them. It is also a story told in achingly beautiful prose with psychological truth…rescued from oblivion by Text Publishing, that champion of the best of Australian literature…this is a book you will never regret reading.'

M/C Reviews

‘The Young Desire It presents the adolescent boy’s view with power and poignancy.’

The Times

‘A first novel of exceptional interest and originality.' 

Spectator

‘Amazingly brilliant.' 

Liverpool Daily Post

‘The Young Desire It is suffused in such rich language and evocative allusions it is surprisingly hard to put aside.’

NZ Weekend Herald

‘This intensely personal work is a beautiful ode of colonial childhood.’

Dominion Post/Weekend Press