[3] Between 1931 and 1933, he visited Europe, where he engaged in left-wing political activities in England, and spent three months in Wormwood Scrubs Prison.
He wrote novels, short stories and a history of the Great Depression in Australia.
He is best known for two books, his autobiographical novel, Alien Son, first published in 1952 and for Distant Land, a story about a Yiddish-speaking Polish couple, the husband a former Talmudic prodigy turned intellectual and his wife Shoshanah, as they struggle to recreate and conserve their Jewish culture in a strange land.
He travelled to the Soviet Union several times, once with Manning Clark and James Devaney.
[3] In 1985 he died on his birthday in Heidelberg, and was survived by his wife, who was of Scottish descent,[5] and their daughter.