The Burning Island

by Jock Serong

Overview

A father's obsession. A daughter's quest.

Eliza Grayling, born in Sydney when the colony itself was still an infant, has lived there all her thirty-two years. Too tall, too stern—too old, now—for marriage, she looks out for her reclusive father, Joshua, and wonders about his past. There is a shadow there: an old enmity.

When Joshua Grayling is offered the chance for a reckoning with his nemesis, Eliza is horrified. It involves a sea voyage with an uncertain, probably violent, outcome. Insanity for an elderly blind man, let alone a drunkard.

Unable to dissuade her father from his mad fixation, Eliza begins to understand she may be forced to go with him. Then she sees the vessel they will be sailing on. And in that instant, the voyage of the Moonbird becomes Eliza’s mission too.

Irresistible prose, unforgettable characters and magnificent, epic storytelling: The Burning Island delivers everything readers have come to expect from Jock Serong. It may be his most moving, compelling novel yet.

Jock Serong’s novels have received the Ned Kelly Award for First Fiction, the Colin Roderick Award and the inaugural Staunch Prize (UK). He lives with his family on Victoria’s far west coast.

‘There is some kind of magic in the way Jock Serong conjures places and times and people. The Burning Island is a ripping yarn of a book; sometimes while reading I’d be sunk so deep in its adventures, and in the precision of captured moments, that if interrupted I’d rise to the surface blinking, reluctant and surprised.’ Lucy Treloar

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781925923520
Publisher:	The Text Publishing Company
Publication date:	09/01/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	400
Sales rank:	458,053
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Jock Serong’s novels have received the Ned Kelly Award for First Fiction, the Colin Roderick Award and the inaugural Staunch Prize (UK). He lives with his family on Victoria’s far west coast.

Editorial Reviews

"There is some kind of magic in the way Jock Serong conjures worlds and times and people. The Burning Island is a ripping yarn of a book; sometimes while reading I’d be sunk so deep in its adventures, and in the precision of captured moments, that if interrupted I’d rise to the surface blinking, reluctant and surprised." —Lucy Treloar, author of Wolfe Island

"The book is a bloody ripper. It’s a propulsive page turner with characters so real and complex that you can see them and is beautifully written at the sentence level. It’s about Australia. It’s about the deep violence of colonisation to the human world and the natural world. It’s about family, outward and inward exploration, the deep sea around us and within us."―Sarah Krasnostein, author of The Trauma Cleaner

"Devastatingly brilliant...Beautiful, mournful, infuriating and brimming with tension, On the Java Ridgeis utterly incomparable."― Shelf Awareness

"Minutely observed, raw and compassionate, Jock Serong’s writing holds the reader’s attention from the first word."―Staunch Prize judges, On the Java Ridge

"Serong has written a fine historical novel in The Burning Island. Its vivid depiction of Tasmania's frontier wars during the 19th century, and those who survived them, allow us to reconsider the colonial infancy of the burning island we inhabit today."―Sydney Morning Herald

"A talented storyteller."―Booklist on Preservation

"The moving story of a daughter’s devotion to her father, with a cracking denouement reminiscent of an Hercule Poirot mystery… The Burning Island starts out as a crime thriller involving a search for a missing ship and a quest for revenge [and]…turns into something much more."―Australian Book Review

"Gripping, gothic and unexpected: Jock Serong achieves the impossible, a man creating a completely brilliant central female character."―Michael Veitch, author of Hell Ship

From the Publisher