In The Great World Malouf enters familiar Australian territory with a story of war experience and mateship. The narrative contrasts the personalities of two men and their experiences in the Second World War, Digger Keen, the archetypal, taciturn Australian, gifted with a photographic memory, and Vic Curran, whose ambition and drive take him from poverty to the top of the business world. The Great World was first published in 1990 and won the Miles Franklin Award in 1991, the Adelaide Festival Award and two international awards, the 1991 Commonwealth Prize for fiction and the Prix Femina Etranger in France for the best foreign novel. This subseries consists of a draft early version of the novel, originally titled ‘The Memorialists’, the first handwritten draft of the novel, and a typescript draft in five parts with many handwritten corrections and additions.

Remembering Babylon, set mainly in a mid-nineteenth-century settlement in Queensland, is a compressed epic, centering on the theme of exile and the strange challenge posed by one who, like William Buckley, had lived with the Aborigines, becoming ‘a white black man.’ It was first published in 1993. This subseries consists of six folders of notes, handwritten drafts, three typescripts with many handwritten corrections and additions, publishers’ proofs with many corrections, and a re-typed transcript with corrections throughout.

'The year is 1827, and in a remote hut on the high plains of New South Wales, two strangers spend the night in talk. One, Carney, an illiterate Irishman, ex-convict and bushranger, is to be hanged at dawn. The other, Adair, also Irish, is an officer of the police who has been sent to supervise the hanging. As the night wears on, the two discover unexpected connections between their lives, and learn new truths. Outside the hut, Adair's troopers sit uneasily, reflecting on their own pasts and futures, waiting for the morning to come. With ironic humour and in prose of starkly evocative power, the novel moves between Australia and Ireland to explore questions of nature and justice, reason and un-reason. , the workings of fate, and the small measure of freedom a man may claim in the face of death.' Source: Publisher's blurb (Vintage reprint).
This sub-series contains handwritten and typescript drafts, with emendations.

Short stories, most of which appear in the short story collection Every Move You Make. The short stories that appeared in the publication are: The Valley of Lagoons, Every Move You Make, War Baby, Towards Midnight, Elsewhere, Mrs Porter and the Rock, and The Domestic Cantata. This sub-series contains two files of short story typescript drafts.

Ransom retells the story of the Iliad from books 22 to 24. This subseries has manuscript and typescript drafts, with handwritten emendations. By close textual comparison (including with the published novel), these versions have been put into the order in which they were likely produced.

Literary awards and nominations include:
2010 winner International Awards — John D. Criticos Prize. Awarded to David Malouf for his novel Ransom.
2010 shortlisted Prime Minister's Literary Awards — Fiction - for Ransom.
2010 Australian Literature Society Gold Medal ... presented to David Malouf for his novel Ransom.
2010 shortlisted New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards — Christina Stead Prize for Fiction - for Ransom.
2011 shortlisted International Awards — International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award - for Ransom.

Unpublished typescripts by David Malouf.

Voss is an opera in two acts based on the novel by Patrick White. The score is by Richard Meale and the libretto by David Malouf. This subseries includes a handwritten outline of Voss, a typescript of the libretto with many handwritten corrections, and a photocopy of the music score, inscribed by Richard Meale to David Malouf.

Comprises two drafts of Invocation to Earth by Diana Blom. Libretto by David Malouf.

Remembering Babylon : for tenor voice and piano, composed by Diana Blom ; text by David Malouf, 2 versions, one unpublished with holograph letter by Diana Blom, dated 8 Nov 2001; the other is the score published Wollongong, Wirrapang Pty Ltd, 2013, (31 pages); 21 x 30 cm, with note "Dear David, Finally published! Cheers Dinty".

Comprised of two drafts:

1. 'The Aspern Papers', opera in one act from the story by Henry James, typescript with extensive emendations and cut and paste inserts, 21 leaves, [David Malouf’s 2017 note: First written for the Canadian composer Owen Underhill. Commission fell through. Set by Melbourne composer Eve Duncan. Not yet commissioned for performance].
2. 'The Aspern Papers : a chamber opera. Scene One'. Libretto by David Malouf. Based on a story by Henry James, 82 pages, with letter from Eve Duncan, 6 Aug 2013. Spiral bound.