Displaced Person (novel)

The story follows Graeme, an ordinary Australian teenager, who begins to experience a disturbing unraveling of his reality. It starts subtly - he’s ignored while ordering at a fast food restaurant. Soon, even his parents and girlfriend fail to acknowledge his presence, no matter how loudly he speaks. As his interactions with the world become increasingly one-sided, Graeme finds himself slipping through the cracks of existence. The vibrant world around him fades into monochrome, leaving him in a grey, lifeless version of reality where he appears to be vanishing altogether.

Blending elements of cosmic horror with science-fiction, the novel explores themes of identity, alienation, and the fragile boundaries between self and society.

• Dedication: For Margaret, La Belle Dame sans Merci, Without whom...
• Epigraph: All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream. - Edgar Allan Poe.

After its initial publication in Australia by Hyland House in 1979,{{cite web|title= Displaced Person (Hyland House) |publisher= National Library of Australia|url= https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/1303383|access-date= 20 January 2024}} and its publication in USA at the same time by Harper & Row{{cite web|title= Misplaced Person by Lee Harding (Harper & Row)|publisher= ISFDB|url= https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?8312|access-date= 20 January 2024}} the novel was reprinted as follows:

• Penguin Books, Australia, 1981{{cite web|title= Displaced Person (Penguin) |publisher= National Library of Australia|url= https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/2951388|access-date= 20 January 2024}}
• Puffin, Australia, 1982{{cite web|title= Displaced Person (Puffin) |publisher= National Library of Australia|url= https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/304860|access-date= 20 January 2024}}
• Bantam Books, USA, 1983{{cite web|title= Misplaced Persons by Lee Harding (Bantam Books) |publisher= ISFDB|url= https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?233233|access-date= 20 January 2024}}
• Penguin Books, UK, 1988{{cite web|title= Displaced Person by Lee Harding (Penguin 1988) |publisher= ISFDB|url= https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?240669|access-date= 20 January 2024}}
• Puffin Books - 1991
• Rogues & Scoundrels - 2025

The novel was also translated into Swedish in 1981, and German in 1987.{{cite web|title= Limbus by Lee Harding (Heyne) |publisher= ISFDB|url= https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?605677|access-date= 20 January 2024}}

Writing in The Canberra Times Ralph Elliott noted: "This is a story with almost as many levels as medieval allegory. It can be read as science fiction, as a psychological study of adolescent alienation, as an allegory of man in the modern world, or as pure fantasy. It questions man's existence, not inappropriately in Berkeleyan terms, and focuses on problems of relationships, between parents and child, between boy and girl, between adolescent and society."{{cite web|title="Many-levelled Allegory" |newspaper= Canberra Times|date= 9 February 1980|publisher= The Canberra Times, 9 February 1980, p15|url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article137014402|access-date= 20 January 2024}}

Algis Budrys, reviewing the book for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, noted that "Harding's book duplicates the long processes of time. He has added this furniture to a common primal fear which he may or may not consider an original inspiration, and produced what amounts to a generification. Long after Aldiss and Disch and the rest of those fellows are forgotten, this sort of story will have drifted into the folklore, and when the Almighty looks for what was truly viable in SF, this is what He will find, smoothed off and grayed like some slumped old range of timeworn mountains, far more often than He will encounter some sharp-edged cleft or some bright, shining peak."{{cite web|title="Books – Algis Budrys" |publisher= F&SF, May 1983, p46|url=https://archive.org/details/Fantasy_Science_Fiction_v064n05_1983-05/page/n45/mode/2up|access-date= 20 January 2024}}

• Alan Marshall Award for Best Unpublished Novel 1977, winner{{cite web|title= Austlit — Alan Marshall Award for Best Unpublished Novel |publisher= Austlit|url=https://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/v36?mainTabTemplate=awardWorksAndAgents&from=6&count=3|access-date= 20 January 2024}}
• Children's Book of the Year Award: Older Readers 1980, winner{{cite web|title="Book award to Victorian" |newspaper= Canberra Times|date= 12 July 1980|publisher= The Canberrra Times, 12 July 1980, p3|url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article125609765|access-date= 20 January 2024}}
• Ditmar Awards — Australian Fiction 1980, shortlisted{{cite web | title = A Winning History | website = Australian Ditmar Awards | url = http://www.ditspillers.com | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20060820052416/http://www.ditspillers.com/ | archive-date = 20 August 2006 | publisher = Tony Plank | access-date = 20 January 2024}}(Click on "Winners History" to access relevant page.)

• 1979 in Australian literature

{{reflist}}

{{Children's Book of the Year Award for Older Readers}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Displaced Person}}

Category: 1979 Australian novels

Category: Australian children's novels

Category: Novels set in Australia

Category:CBCA Children's Book of the Year Award–winning works