Lilian's Story

Special edition of the 2005 Miles Franklin Award winner, published to commemorate Allen + Unwin's 20th birthday celebrations. The heartwarming story of Lilian Singer, who starts life at the beginning of the twentieth century as the daughter of a prosperous middle-class Australian family and ends it as a cheerfully eccentric bag-lady living on the streets, quoting Shakespeare for a living.

This is the story of Lilian Singer, born on 'a wild night in the year of Federation' in to a stifling household which totally fails to subdue her. Madness, cruelty and sexuality permeate the household but Lilian's sights are set on education, love and - finally - her own transcendent forms of independence.

Lilian Singer is that rare being: an eccentric true to her own self whose story reaches out to touch and delight every reader.

Lilian's Story is the most loved of Kate Grenville's fictional creations. Lilian Singer radiates energy and vitality through every page of this striking work.

'Dazzling fiction of universal appeal' - Patrick White

'A work of considerable beauty and power...told with great honesty and virtuosity.' - New York Times Book Review