The World Beneath

Winner of the People’s Choice Award for the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards 2010

• Shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards 2010 Christina Stead Prize for Fiction • Shortlisted for the Barbara Jefferis Award 2010 • Shortlisted for the ALS Gold Medal for outstanding literary work • Shortlisted for the 2010 Australian Book Industry Awards Literary Fiction Book of the Year

Once, Rich and Sandy were environmental activists, part of a world-famous blockade in Tasmania to save the wilderness. Now, twenty-five years later, they have both settled into the uncomfortable compromises of middle age — although they’ve gone about it in very different ways. The only thing they have in common these days is their fifteen-year-old daughter, Sophie.

When Rich decides to take Sophie, whom he hardly knows, on a trek into the Tasmanian wilderness, his overconfidence and her growing disillusion with him set off a chain of events that no one could have predicted. Instead of respect, Rich finds antagonism in his relationship with Sophie; and in the vast landscape he once felt an affinity with, he encounters nothing but disorientation and fear.

Ultimately, all three characters will learn that if they are to survive, each must traverse not only the secret territories that lie between them but also those within themselves.