Sally Henderson:
Ivory Moon

Sally Henderson’s long love affair with Africa and its elephants was brought to life in the bestselling Silent Footsteps. Her new book Ivory Moon continues that affair in one of the most inhospitable landscapes on the planet…

When Sally and her husband Jer volunteer to run a remote safari camp in the parched Namib Desert where existence depends on the life-giving fog from the Skeleton Coast, she has no idea if it is heaven or hell that awaits her. Sally is tested by the camp staff, who come from many different tribes, and challenged by the intractable men’s men who make Africa their hunting ground.

Vivid and immediate, Sally’s depiction of the wildlife that rules Africa is unparalleled. Ivory Moon takes us into the heart of a strange desert world where nothing is as it seems.

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Will Elliott

In 2006 Will Elliott’s first novel The Pilo Family Circus won five major literary awards, including the coveted Golden Aurealis Award for Best Novel. He was named one of the best young novelists for 2007 by the Sydney Morning Herald and was shortlisted for the 2006 International Horror Guild Award for Best Novel in the US. It was published by Quercus in the UK and sold into Sweden, Italy, and the US.

Will’s next publication is Strange Places, a memoir of Will’s life as a schizophrenic. Strange Places takes us on a journey through psychosis and out the other side, documenting the delusions, the drugs and the insights that recovery brings: a beautifully written memoir of a harrowing part of this young man’s life. Strange Places was released by HarperCollins in May 2009.

“I’ve been to places that no one else on this planet will ever go. Me, I’ve lived for a short time as a werewolf. As a vampire. As a revolutionary. As a psychic. As a magician. As someone who cannot be hurt by physical force. As someone who can speak to the dead… for a while, it was all real… I will never feel so alive as I felt the night I ran barefoot from hospital, hearing vampires rustle in the trees above, seeing a war zone around me, seeing battalions and guarded castles in the houses to either side of me, the air thick with magic, crackling with an energy that exists on the far boundary of the human mind, which, once crossed, we’re not supposed to return from… nothing will ever again make me feel so alive as I felt that night. Nothing.”

Rights available: US and Canada: through ALM World rights: Annabel Blay: annabel[dot]blay[ât]harpercollins[dot]com[dot]au

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Amanda Lohrey:
Vertigo

Amanda Lohrey is regarded as one of Australias leading literary fiction writers. Her latest work Vertigo is a fable of love and awakening, a bush pastoral about the unexpected way emotions can return and life can change. This beautifully-written novella tells the story of Luke and Anna, who decide they no longer want to live in the city and seek refuge in a sleepy settlement on the coast. There they build a new life amid the beauty and danger of the natural world. But the country is not what it seems from a distance as they begin to realise once they are faced with the environment. There is drought and then a life threatening fire, plus the various local characters they begin friendships with. And then there is their son who comes with them… or does he? [More… ]

World rights: Black Ink Contact: Sophy Williams http://www.blackincbooks.com/

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Nobel Prize for Literature 2000

Chinese playwright, novelist and artist Gao Xingjian became a critic of the Communist regime as a young man. He fled Beijing and has lived for many years in France where his first novel, Soul Mountain, was first published and became a bestseller, going into five editions. In 2000 he won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Mabel Lee’s English translation of Soul Mountain has been a success worldwide.
     Gao’s second novel One Man’s Bible focuses the political horrors of the twentieth century through the lens of desire and memory. It has received rave reviews in the US.
     In 2004 Gao published a collection of short stories, Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather. In September 2006 HarperCollins Australia released A Case for Literature, a collection of thought-provoking essays.
     Mabel Lee is Gao’s English-language translator. She is represented by Australian Literary Management, and ALM is the lead agent for the English language translations of Gao’s writing.
      You can read the first chapter of Soul Mountain on this website, as well as Mabel’s perceptive and informative Introduction to the book, the Swedish Academy’s bibliographical note published on the occasion of the 2000 Nobel Prize, and a note about the author.
     Rights in the English language translation of Soul Mountain have been sold to HarperCollins Australia, HarperCollins US, and HarperCollins UK.