Robert Dessaix

Robert Dessaix (born 1944), also known as Robert Jones, is an Australian novelist, essayist and journalist.

Early life and education Robert Dessaix was born in Sydney, Australia, and was adopted at an early age by Tom and Jean Jones, after which he was known as Robert Jones. Tom Jones, a merchant seaman, was already 55 when Robert was adopted. The manuscript was written in French, and the book concerns his journey to an alternative sexuality after twelve years of marriage and his meeting with his birth mother Yvonne. It was made into a screenplay by Ross Wilson in 1999. Dessaix never met his birth father, who was killed in an air crash shortly after the end of World War II.

His first fictional work, the epistolary novel Night Letters, was published in 1996. It was translated into German, French, Italian, Dutch, Finnish, Polish, and Portuguese.

Manuscripts concerning A Mother's Disgrace are in the Mitchell Library of the State Library of New South Wales, along with Night Letters.

His second novel was Corfu, published in 2001.

Dessaix's long work, Twilight of Love: Travels with Turgenev, published in 2004, defies genre characterisation, interweaving a personal travelogue with a biography of Ivan Turgenev. It takes inspiration from his doctoral thesis on Turgenev and the Soviet Union, as well as Alain de Botton's works on travel, art and philosophy.

In March 2010, it was revealed that Dessaix had been refused a visa to attend the Shanghai International Literary Festival. He had declared his HIV-positive status on his application, and although the guidelines stated that HIV status would have no prejudicial effect, it was felt that it must have been the reason for the refusal because Dessaix had had no political involvement in matters concerning China.

He published a further memoir, Chameleon: A Memoir of Art, Travel, Ideas and Love, in 2025.

Awards and nominations NBC Banjo Awards, NBC Banjo Award for Non-Fiction, 1994: A Mother's Disgrace – shortlisted Booksellers Choice Award, 1996: Night Letters : A Journey Through Switzerland and Italy Edited and Annotated by Igor Miazmov – joint winner Australian Literature Society Gold Medal, 1997: Night Letters: A Journey Through Switzerland and Italy Edited and Annotated by Igor Miazmov – winner Colin Roderick Award, 1998: (And So Forth) – winner Nib Literary Award (Waverley Library), 2005: Twilight of Love: Travels with Turgenev – shortlisted Victorian Premier's Literary Award, The Nettie Palmer Prize for Non-Fiction, 2005: Twilight of Love: Travels with Turgenev – winner New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards, Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction, 2005: Twilight of Love : Travels with Turgenev – shortlisted Margaret Scott Prize, 2007: Twilight of Love : Travels with Turgenev – winner Australia Council Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature, 2022

Works

Novels Night Letters: A Journey Through Switzerland and Italy Edited and Annotated by Igor Miazmov (1996), Secrets (with Drusilla Modjeska and Amanda Lohrey, 1997), Corfu (2001),

Autobiography A Mother's Disgrace (1994), Arabesques : A Tale of Double Lives (2008), What Days Are For (2014), Chameleon: A Memoir of Art, Travel, Ideas and Love (2025),

Non-fiction (and so forth) (1998), Twilight of Love: Travels with Turgenev (2004), As I Was Saying: A Collection of Musings (2012), Arabesques: A Tale of Double Lives The Pleasures of Leisure (2017), The Time of Our Lives: Growing Older Well (2020),

Edited Australian Gay and Lesbian Writing: An Anthology (1993), Picador New Writing (1993), Speaking Their Minds: Intellectuals and the Public Culture in Australia (1998), The Best Australian Essays 2004 (2004), The Best Australian Essays 2005 (2005),

Translation

The Mysterious Tales of Ivan Turgenev (1979),