The Brilliant Boy Audiobook By Gideon Haigh cover art

The Brilliant Boy

Doc Evatt and the Great Australian Dissent

Preview

Try for $0.00
Prime logo Prime members: New to Audible?
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

The Brilliant Boy

By: Gideon Haigh
Narrated by: Gideon Haigh
Try for $0.00

$14.95/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $18.74

Buy for $18.74

Confirm purchase
Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.
Cancel

About this listen

Longlisted for the 2022 Indie Book Awards

Chosen as a "Book of the Year" in The Australian, The Australian Financial Review, and The Australian Book Review.

In a quiet Sydney street in 1937, a seven-year-old immigrant boy drowned in a ditch that had filled with rain after being left unfenced by council workers. How the law should deal with the trauma of the family’s loss was one of the most complex and controversial cases to reach Australia’s High Court, where it seized the imagination of its youngest and cleverest member.

These days, "Doc" Evatt is remembered mainly as the hapless and divisive opposition leader during the long ascendancy of his great rival Sir Robert Menzies. Yet long before we spoke of "public intellectuals", Evatt was one: a dashing advocate, an inspired jurist, an outspoken opinion maker, one of our first popular historians and the nation’s foremost champion of modern art. Through Evatt’s innovative and empathic decision in Chester v the Council of Waverley Municipality, which argued for the law to acknowledge inner suffering as it did physical injury, Gideon Haigh rediscovers the most brilliant Australian of his day, a patriot with a vision of his country charting its own path and being its own example - the same attitude he brought to being the only Australian president of the UN General Assembly, and instrumental in the foundation of Israel.

A feat of remarkable historical perception, deep research, and masterful storytelling, The Brilliant Boy confirms Gideon Haigh as one of our finest writers of nonfiction. It shows Australia in a rare light, as a genuinely clever country prepared to contest big ideas and face the future confidently.

"Gideon Haigh has always been an exquisite wordsmith, and he proves here that he is also an intuitive historian and acute biographer with a masterful control of the broad sweep and telling detail." (AFR Books of the Year)

"Here is a master craftsman delivering one of his most finely honed works. Meticulous in its research, humane in its storytelling, The Brilliant Boy is Gideon Haigh at his lush, luminous best. Haigh shines a light on person, place and era with the sheer force of his intellect and the generosity of his words. The Brilliant Boy is simply a brilliant book." (Clare Wright, Stella-Prize winning author of The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka)

"Gideon Haigh has a nose for Australian stories that light up the past from new angles, and he tells this one with verve, grace and lightly worn erudition. I couldn’t put it down." (Judith Brett, The Saturday Paper)

"An absolutely remarkable, moving, and elegant re-reading of the early life of an extraordinary Australian. Gideon Haigh is one of Australia's finest writers and thinkers...mesmerizing...one of the best Australian biographies I have read for a long time." (Michael McKernan, Canberra Times)

©2021 Gideon Haigh (P)2021 Simon & Schuster Audio
Australia, New Zealand & Oceania History Law Oceania
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2

What listeners say about The Brilliant Boy

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    2
  • 4 Stars
    0
  • 3 Stars
    1
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Performance
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    2
  • 4 Stars
    0
  • 3 Stars
    1
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Story
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    2
  • 4 Stars
    0
  • 3 Stars
    1
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Great book

A great biography, not just of Evatt but of one of the most difficult periods of Australian history- between the wars and its aftermath. The author blends his career, judgements, relationships and politics in a way that displays his empathy, courage, brilliance, ego and deep personal flaws.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!