'... the best novel I have read for a long time.' - A.S. Byatt, Financial Times Long-listed for the Man Book Prize and published to wide acclaim, The Lost Dog is a moving, funny and beautiful contemporary Australian novel filled with luminous writing and startlingly wise observations.
Tom Loxley is holed up in a remote bush shack trying to finish his book on Henry James when his beloved dog goes missing. What follows is a triumph of storytelling, as The Lost Dog loops back and forth in time to take the reader on a spellbinding journey into worlds far removed from the present tragedy.
Set in present-day Australia and mid-twentieth century India, here is a haunting, layered work that brilliantly counterpoints new cityscapes and their inhabitants with the untamed, ancient continent beyond. 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. It is a book of wonders: a gripping contemporary novel which examines the weight of history as well as different ways of understanding the world.
About Michelle de Kretser
Michelle de Kretser was born in Sri Lanka and emigrated to Australia when she was 14. She was educated in Melbourne and Paris. Michelle has worked as a university tutor, an editor and a book reviewer. She is the author of two other novels, The Rose Grower and The Hamilton Case.
