Chameleon

Robert Dessaix's testament to a wonderful life is funny, incisive and literary. His voice is completely distinctive and utterly compelling.

'A dazzlingly beautiful reading experience.' Guardian

'Sweet Jesus, this is beautiful.' David Marr

Robert Dessaix's Chameleon is about everything that matters, a book of memories that flow so freely they seem to happen as we read. Cartwheeling from story to story, Dessaix describes an identity in flux: his beginnings as an adopted child named Thomas Robert Jones, his youthful interest in religious thinking, his obsession with all things Russian, his marriage to Lisa and divorce, his discovery of travel. In North Africa he finds different ways of feeling and being, and in Australia he begins his abiding relationship with his partner Peter Timms. At every point he muses on pleasure, art, sex, literature, infatuation, happiness, music, life, death and all the rest.

Chameleon is a virtuoso performance of self-revelation, as Dessaix explores how the restless mind takes constant detours to search for what makes life good, a place of wisdom and love.

'...As thrilling and thoughtful as anything you'll get from younger, hungrier writers.' Tim Byrne (Best Australian Books of 2025) Guardian

'Wise, witty, and sumptuously idiosyncratic, Robert Dessaix is a writer for all seasons.' Andrea Goldsmith

'In this flinty yet fond conversation with his long-ago self, Robert Dessaix explores the myriad contradictions that make us fully human. His words, and his singular wisdom, shimmer.' Ailsa Piper

'Carefully crafted and moving.' The Booklist, Age