In the first Quarterly Essay for 2011, David Malouf returns to one of the most fundamental questions and gives it a modern twist: what makes for a happy life? With grace and profundity, Malouf explores new and old ways to talk about contentment and the self. In considering the happy life - what it is, and what makes it possible - Malouf returns to the 'highest wisdom' of the classics, looks at how, thanks to Thomas Jefferson's way with words, happiness became a 'right', and examines joy in the flesh as depicted by Rubens and Rembrandt. In a world become ever larger and impersonal, Malouf finds happiness in an unlikely place. The Happy Life is an essay to savour and reflect upon by one of Australia's greatest novelists. Quarterly Essay 41 also includes correspondence to the previous issue, Trivial Pursuit by George Megalogenis, with correspondence from Peter Martin, Andrew Leigh, Tim Dixon, Mark O'Connor, Shaun Carney, Hugh Mackay and Barry Jones.