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Michelle de Kretser's electrifying take on scary monsters turns the novel upside down - just as migration has upended her characters' lives.  Lyle works for a sinister government department in near-future Australia. An Asian migrant, he fears repatriation and embraces 'Australian values'. He's also preoccupied by his ambitious wife, his wayward children and his strong-minded elderly mother. Islam has been banned in the country, the air is smoky from a Permanent Fire Zone, and one pandemic has already run its course.  Lili's family migrated to Australia from Asia when she was a teenager. Now, in the 1980s, she's teaching in the south of France. She makes friends, observes the treatment handed out to North African immigrants and is creeped out by her downstairs neighbour. All the while, Lili is striving to be A Bold, Intelligent Woman like Simone de Beauvoir.  Three scary monsters - racism, misogyny and ageism - roam through this mesmerising novel. Its reversible format enacts the disorientation that migrants experience when changing countries changes the story of their lives. With this suspenseful, funny and profound book, Michelle de Kretser has made something thrilling and new.  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Wonderfully written, Questions of Travel is an extraordinary work of imagination - a transformative, very funny and intensely moving novel.Praise for The Lost Dog:'This is the best novel I have read in a long time.' - AS Byatt'a beautiful piece of writing - place your bets now for the Booker.' - Kate Saunders, The TimesPraise for The Hamilton Case:'one of the most remarkable books I've read in a long while - subtle and mysterious, both comic and eerie, and brilliantly evocative of time and place. I've never been to Sri Lanka but I feel it's become part of my interior landscape, and I so much admire Michelle de Kretser's formidable technique - her characters feel alive, and she can create a sweeping narrative which encompasses years, and yet still retain the sharp, almost hallucinatory detail. It's brilliant. 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It's magnificent, peerless writing' Guardian  'When my family emigrated it felt as if we'd been stood on our heads.'  Michelle de Kretser's electrifying take on scary monsters turns the novel upside down - just as migration has upended her characters' lives.  Lyle works for a sinister government department in near-future Australia. An Asian migrant, he fears repatriation and embraces 'Australian values'. He's also preoccupied by his ambitious wife, his wayward children and his strong-minded elderly mother. Islam has been banned in the country, the air is smoky from a Permanent Fire Zone, and one pandemic has already run its course.  Lili's family migrated to Australia from Asia when she was a teenager. Now, in the 1980s, she's teaching in the south of France. She makes friends, observes the treatment handed out to North African immigrants and is creeped out by her downstairs neighbour. All the while, Lili is striving to be A Bold, Intelligent Woman like Simone de Beauvoir.  Three scary monsters - racism, misogyny and ageism - roam through this mesmerising novel. Its reversible format enacts the disorientation that migrants experience when changing countries changes the story of their lives. With this suspenseful, funny and profound book, Michelle de Kretser has made something thrilling and new.  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With its atmosphere of menace and an acute sense of the unexplained in any story, it illuminates the collision of the wild and the civilised, modernity and the past, home and exile. \"The Lost Dog\" is a mystery and a love story, an exploration of art and nature, a meditation on ageing and the passage of time. 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Worlds of meaning spin out of perfectly chosen words in this rare, beguiling and brilliant ghost story by Miles Franklin Literary Award-winning writer Michelle de Kretser.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49578145186065,"sku":"GOR006658618","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50153748365585,"sku":"GOR008720706","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/176011121X.jpg?v=1750929731"},{"product_id":"scary-monsters-book-michelle-de-kretser-9781761065101","title":"Scary Monsters","description":"SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2022 MILES FRANKLIN LITERARY AWARD    WINNER OF THE 2023 RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE FOR FICTION   'A novel of luminous intelligence and profound depth, written with verve, humour and exceptional elegance.' - Monica Ali, author of Brick Lane   When my family emigrated it felt as if we'd been stood on our heads.  Michelle de Kretser's electrifying take on scary monsters turns the novel upside down - just as migration has upended her characters' lives.   Lili's family migrated to Australia from Asia when she was a teenager. Now, in the 1980s, she's teaching in the south of France. She makes friends, observes the treatment handed out to North African immigrants and is creeped out by her downstairs neighbour. All the while, Lili is striving to be A Bold, Intelligent Woman like Simone de Beauvoir.   Lyle works for a sinister government department in near-future Australia. An Asian migrant, he fears repatriation and embraces 'Australian values'. He's also preoccupied by his ambitious wife, his wayward children and his strong-minded elderly mother. Islam has been banned in the country, the air is smoky from a Permanent Fire Zone, and one pandemic has already run its course.  Three scary monsters - racism, misogyny and ageism - roam through this mesmerising novel. Its reversible format enacts the disorientation that migrants experience when changing countries changes the story of their lives. With this suspenseful, funny and profound book, Michelle de Kretser has made something thrilling and new.  Which comes first, the future or the past?  Praise for Scary Monsters:      'A radically brilliant diptych-novel, in complex conversation with itself and with the world we live in, written by one of the living masters of the art of fiction. A beautifully troubling book.'  - Max Porter, author of Lanny  'Bold, spare and completely original. One of the most exciting contemporary novels I've read for a very long time.' - Preti Taneja, author of We That Are Young  'Written with incandescent moral energy, boundless compassion, and astonishing precision and beauty, Michelle de Kretser's Scary Monsters extends the very possibilities of the novel form. On the contemporary international scene, there are very, very few writers who can match her style, her intelligence, her vision. To read her is to be changed.' - Neel Mukherjee, author of The Lives of Others  'In Scary Monsters de Kretser addresses the weightiest of subjects with the lightest and deftest of touches, and the result is funny, playful, painful, angry and, above all, ferociously smart. It's a dazzling novel, by a hugely talented author.' - Sarah Waters, author of The Paying Guests      'Scary Monsters is a marvel. Each of the two very different parts of the novel had me totally riveted, intensely absorbed, wowed by de Kretser's scathing accuracy--whether she's chronicling youth's delights and distortions or a future where prosperity is the new \"unethics\". It's a wildly remarkable book that unfolds like no other.' - Joan Silber, PEN\/Faulkner Award-winning author of Improvement  'I love the way Scary Monsters asks urgent questions about what kind of future we might be sleepwalking towards. And heightens the enquiry by looking back; by unsettling and disturbing our sense of where we are now and where we are headed by dissecting - with exquisite deftness - the barely-concealed misogyny and racism of then, to awaken our senses to now. It's a novel of luminous intelligence and profound depth, written with verve, humour and exceptional elegance.' - Monica Ali, author of Brick Lane","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49597411918097,"sku":"GOR013281578","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1761065106.jpg?v=1759228798"},{"product_id":"springtime-book-michelle-de-kretser-9781760876708","title":"Springtime","description":"Picking up her pace, Frances saw a woman in the shadowy depths of the garden. She wore a wide hat and a trailing pink dress; a white hand emerged from her sleeve. There came upon Frances a sensation that sometimes overtook her when she was looking at a painting: space was foreshortened, time stilled.  When Frances met Charlie at a party in Melbourne he was married with a young son.  Now Charlie and Frances live in Sydney with her dog, Rod, and an unshakeable sense that they have tipped the world on its axis. Everything is alien, unfamiliar, exotic: haunting, even.  A rare, beguiling and brilliant ghost story by Miles Franklin Literary Award-winner Michelle de Kretser.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49597792026897,"sku":"GOR013310368","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1760876704.jpg?v=1759232282"},{"product_id":"questions-of-travel-book-michelle-de-kretser-9780316219228","title":"Questions of Travel","description":"\u003cdiv\u003eLaura Fraser grows up in Sydney, motherless, with a cold, professional father and an artistic bent. Ravi Mendis lives on the other side of the globe -- exploring the seductive new world of the Internet, his father dead, his mother struggling to get by.Their stories alternate throughout Michelle de Kretser's ravishing novel, culminating in unlikely fates for them both, destinies influenced by travel -- voluntary in her case, enforced in his.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e With money from an inheritance, Laura sets off to see the world, eventually returning to Sydney to work for a publisher of travel guides. There she meets Ravi, now a Sri Lankan political exile who wants only to see a bit of Australia and make a living. Where do these two disparate characters, and an enthralling array of others, truly belong? 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