Johnno

Author(s): David Malouf

Location(s): Brisbane

Genre(s): Fiction

Era(s): 1940s-50s

Johnno is written in the first person past tense and the narrator is only ever known by the nickname “Dante”. Johnno is heavily autobiographical.[2][3] The novel is centred upon the friendship between Dante and a schoolmate known as “Johnno” in their adolescence and early adulthood in the 1940s and 1950s in Brisbane.

The subtropical Brisbane environment and various elements of upper-class Australian culture in the twentieth century recur throughout the book. There are many references to Brisbane’s verdant gardens and parklands and other aspects of its urban geography such as its now-defunct tramways and the Brisbane River.

The novel takes the form of an extended reminiscence and begins with the narrator finding a photograph of Johnno among his recently deceased father’s belongings. The story then begins in Dante’s childhood and education at Brisbane Grammar School and then follows the development of the friendship between the staid, conventional Dante and the unruly, eccentric and frequently intoxicated Johnno through school, university and a period of Bohemian-style living in Europe. The novel ends with Johnno presumed to have committed suicide (though the reader does not know for sure) and his funeral in suburban Brisbane.

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