Inheriting the world : German exiles, Napoleon's campaign in Egypt, and Australia's multicultural national identity

Lynda Ng reads three Australian works (two historical novels and a fictional biography) to demonstrate 'how contemporary Australian authors reflect the rise of global culture by deepening and broadening Australia's historical timeline. The willingness of these authors to show the indebtedness of Australian culture to that of other nations echoes Wai Chee Dimock's attempts to move American literature beyond its national confines by repositioning it on the scale of a planetary "deep time". Paradoxically, however, in these novels the incorporation of historical events that would not traditionally be regarded as Australian does not diminish the preponderance of Australian nationalism. Rather, it enhances the prestige of the Australian nation by representing it as an active participant in a network of cosmopolitan and transnational cultural flows'.