 In late 1954 his father, a public servant in the Department of Foreign Affairs, was posted to Athens as an immigration attaché, and Brooks’ early childhood was spent in Greece and Yugoslavia, where his father served in 1958.Upon the family's return Brooks attended Turner Infants, Turner Primary and Canberra High schools.His last year of high school was spent in Cleveland, Ohio, on an American Field Service scholarship, in the months before leaving for which he experienced an illness which kept him bed-bound for two months, a period he spent in intense reading of Sartre, de Beauvoir, Camus, James Joyce and others, and which he has seen subsequently as formative to his writing life.