In the remote outback of Western Australia during World War II, English anthropologist Nicholas Keene and his wife, Stella, raise a lonely child, Perdita. Her upbringing is far from ordinary: in a shack in the wilderness, with a distant father burying himself in books and an unstable mother whose knowledge of Shakespeare forms the backbone of the girl's limited education.
Emotionally adrift, Perdita becomes friends with a deaf and mute boy, Billy, and an Aboriginal girl, Mary. Perdita and Mary come to call one another sister and to share a very special bond. They are content with life in this remote corner of the globe, until a terrible event lays waste to their lives.
Through this exquisite story of Perdita's troubled childhood, Gail Jones explores the values of friendship, loyalty and sacrifice with a brilliance that has already earned her numerous accolades for her previous novels, Dreams of Speaking and Sixty Lights.
Miles Franklin Shortlist 2008
The Time We Have Taken
$27.99 – Trade paperback / Harper Collins
Winner of the 2008 Miles Franklin Literary Award.
That exotic tribe was us. And the time we have taken, our moment.'
One summer morning in 1970, Peter van Rijn, proprietor of the television and wireless shop, pronounces ... Buy or find out more →
Landscape Of Farewell
$35.00 – Hardcover book / Allen & Unwin
A hauntingly beautiful meditation on the land, the past, exile and friendship, Landscape of Farewell is the powerful new novel from acclaimed Australian author, Alex Miller. It is the story of Max Otto, an elderly German... Buy or find out more →
The Fern Tattoo
$32.95 – Trade paperback / Univ Queensland Pr
Ten years after his mother’s death in an accident on the Hume Highway near Canberra, Benedict Waters is contacted by Mrs Darling, who claims to be an old friend of his mother’s. Several years later, he at last agrees to ... Buy or find out more →
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$32.95 – Trade paperback / Vintage
In the remote outback of Western Australia during World War II, English anthropologist Nicholas Keene and his wife, Stella, raise a lonely child, Perdita. Her upbringing is far from ordinary: in a shack in the wilderness... Buy or find out more →
