ArticleAuthors: Sue Lovell (2005)
In The Last Magician, Australian-born Charlie “Fu Hsi” Chang is a renowned professional photographer. He is also a restaurant manager and a seeker of “truths.” A short way into the novel, he recounts to the narrator an anecdote from his Brisbane boyhood, circa late fifties. It is a short but effective lesson in identity acquisition: the young Charlie Fu Hsi tells his teacher that he is a “true blue Aussie.” The teacher looks at him and swiftly replies, “[b]ecause a man is born in a stable, that doesn’t make him a horse.” 
