The Sunken Road

At the height of the Great Depression, with farmers walking off the land and the city’s creeks lined with kerosene-tin shanties, a young mother is taken by a shark in the shallows at Henley Beach. Her grieving husband flees north with his baby son to the town of Pandowie, far from the treacherous ocean. In time, the boy will have a daughter: the wilful auburn-haired Anna Tolley.

Nominated on its original 1996 release for the Man Booker Prize, The Sunken Road is Garry Disher’s proudest achievement. This moving, powerful novel set in the wheat and wool country of mid-north South Australia is at once the story of a region, a town and a people—and of one of the most memorable characters in Australian fiction.

Garry Disher has published fifty titles across multiple genres. His last standalone novel, Bitter Wash Road, won the 2016 German Crime Prize, a prize he had previously won twice. When honoured with last year’s Ned Kelly Lifetime Achievement award, he was described by the Australian Crime Writers Association as ‘a giant not only of crime fiction but of Australian letters’.

‘One of the most original, vibrant, compelling Australian novels’ Sydney Morning Herald

‘Astoundingly original’ The Mail on Sunday