His memoir, Building a Life: Ted Lustig's Story, will be launched by the Hon Jeff Kennett on Tuesday 24 April at the Park Hyatt Hotel in Melbourne at 5.30pm amidst some of Melbourne's leading politicians, architects and building dynasties.

Ted was born in Vienna in 1917 and grew up in Galicia (an area rich in oil) and continued to study at Haifa technical university. His successful career in building design and construction began in the Middle East before he moved to Australia in 1956 as the Melbourne Olympics were taking place.

In this story, Ted Lustig vividly evokes a childhood spent in the lost world of Central European gentility of the 1920s. His reminiscences reveal the roles that chance and hard work pla in the making of a man's fortune. He does not shrink from the measure of tragedy that any life story contains, especially the loss of his first wife Sarah to Alzheimers desease. Always a man of action, he estblished a foundation to combat the disease.

Told with the dry wit and tough practical edge for which he is known in business, Ted Lustig's memoirs put the raconteur onto the printed page and open for readers a window to a life, an industry and an era.

Building a Life: Ted Lustig's Story by Ari Unglik was published by Hardie Grant.