A Short History of Longans

From the award-winning, bestselling author of Stone Sky Gold Mountain comes the story of an Irish-Chinese family over four generations in Australia.

‘They said you were a murdering bushranger.’

It’s the winter of 2049 and Daniel is elderly and long isolated. Soon after yet another devastating storm, this time destroying his beloved longan tree, he finds his fragile peace threatened by a growing friendship with a widowed neighbour and the appearance of a young reporter digging into a shameful event buried deep in his past.

As the novel moves back to autumn 2000 and then to summer 1949 and finally to the spring of the mid-nineteenth century, Daniel’s family’s history unspools, until we meet a Chinese bushranger, Ah Yang.

Intriguing and beautifully written, this dazzling novel unravels the secrets and memories of an Irish-Chinese family to explore what it means to belong to place, to ancestors, to ourselves – spanning centuries and generations.

‘Gorgeously kaleidoscopic and a deft reckoning of Australian identity. A multigenerational jewel that traces the roots and bloodlines of one family across centuries in ways only Mirandi Riwoe can.’ SIANG LU

‘A profoundly tender, intricately crafted novel about ancestry, longing and the fragile threads that bind one life to another. Mirandi Riwoe moves across generations with extraordinary grace, revealing how memory – kept, lost, inherited – shapes who we dare to become. This is storytelling of great compassion and quiet power. Luminous, compassionate and beautifully wrought – Mirandi Riwoe has written a deeply humane and exquisitely moving novel.’ SHANKARI CHANDRAN