Shortlist year: 2020
Shortlist category: Fiction
Published by: Picador an importing of Pan Macmillan
Kitty Hawke, the last inhabitant of a dying island sinking into the wind-lashed Chesapeake Bay, has resigned herself to annihilation... Until one night her granddaughter blows ashore in the midst of a storm, desperate, begging for sanctuary. And when trouble comes following her granddaughter, no one is more surprised than Kitty to find she will fight to save her as fiercely as her name suggests...
A richly imagined and mythic parable of home and kin that cements Lucy Treloar's place as one of our most acclaimed novelists.
About the author
Lucy Treloar
Lucy Treloar is the author of 'Salt Creek', which won the Indie Award for Best Debut, the ABIA Matt Richell Award and the Dobbie Award, and was shortlisted for prizes including the Miles Franklin Literary Award and the UK's Walter Scott Prize. A graduate of the University of Melbourne and RMIT, Lucy works as a writer and editor, in Australia as well as Cambodia, where she lived for a number of years. In between writing, Lucy teaches creative writing at RMIT and Writers Victoria.
Judges’ comments
In 'Wolfe Island' Lucy Treloar creates a disturbing and credible dystopian future. Reclusive artist Kitty Hawke records her life on a sinking island off the coast of the United States. When her granddaughter arrives seeking sanctuary they are forced back onto the dangerous mainland to join refugees from 'the south'. The narrative is both a tense road trip and a fable that probes contemporary fears of environmental disaster, surveillance and conflict. At the heart of this emotionally subtle and richly sensory novel is a memorable portrait of a woman who finds purpose in a crisis. Treloar imagines a bleak but beautiful world with the observant eye of the artist, the wry voice of the sceptic, and the wisdom of a writer who has thought deeply about nature, history and humanity.