Featured Books:

Peter Twohig — The Cartographer

Melbourne, 1959. An 11-year-old boy witnesses a murder as he spies through the window of a strange house. God, whom he no longer counts as a friend, obviously has a pretty screwed-up sense of humour: just one year before, the boy had looked on helplessly as his twin brother, Tom, suffered a violent death.

Now, having been seen by the angry murderer, he is a kid on the run. With only a shady grandfather, a professional standover man and an incongruous local couple as adult mentors, he takes refuge in the dark drains and grimy tunnels beneath the city, transforming himself into a series of superheroes and creating a rather unreliable map to plot out places where he is unlikely to cross paths with the bogeyman.

A bold, captivating and outrageously funny novel about a boy who refuses to give in and the numerous shifty, dodgy and downright malicious bastards he has to contend with on his grand adventure of loss and discovery, The Cartographer is an astounding, fresh and unforgettably poignant novel you’d be a mug to miss!

Peter Twohig was born in Melbourne in 1948 and grew up in Richmond and Dandenong. He survived a Catholic education, and worked in the Australian Public Service until 1992. He then moved to Sydney to become a naturopath and homoeopath. He has degrees in philosophy and complementary medicine. The Cartographer is his first novel.

Australia / New Zealand rights held by Harper Collins/Fourth Estate
Overseas rights available through ALM

Andrew Tink — Non Fiction

Following eight years at the Bar, Andrew Tink spent nineteen years in the New South Wales Parliament, including eleven as a Shadow Minister and three as Shadow Leader of the House. After stepping down in 2007, Andrew became a Visiting Fellow at Macquarie University’s Law School, where he concentrates on his writing.

I signify to your Lordships His Majesty’s Pleasure, that you do forthwith take such Measures as may be necessary for providing a proper number of vessels for the conveyance of 750 Convicts to Botany Bay ...

Just who was the man whose name is proudly borne by Australia’s oldest city, and by another city in Canada? When the British cabinet accepted his recommendation to send convicts to Botany Bay, Lord Sydney, as secretary of state, instructed the Treasury ‘forthwith’ to provide for the First Fleet.
      A John Bull figure, full of bumptious ambition and self-confidence, Sydney had a remarkable political career, largely in opposition. He had sympathised with rebellious American colonists while holding true to British interests, and in 1782 he led in settling the peace between Americans and Britons. As a peer he chose the name Sydney for his barony in memory of his distant uncle Algernon Sidney, beheaded in 1683 for writing ‘the people of England... may change or take away kings’. This very fine biography is a story to savour.

Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2011

Nobel Prize for Literature 2000

Gao Xingjian

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.