The Lost Dog

£16.99

LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2008

The Lost Dog is the latest novel from one of Australia’s most promising young talents, Michelle de Kretser. Tom Loxley is holed up in a remote cottage in the bush, when his dog goes missing, trailing a length of orange twine tied with firm knots. The house belongs to Nelly Zhang, an elusive artists with whom Tom has become enthralled.

What follows is a triumph of storytelling, as The Lost Dog loops back and forward in time to take the reader in a breathtaking journey into worlds far removed from the present tragedy - from an Anglo-Indian childhood to the brittle contemporary Melbourne art scene, from Tom’s scratchy, poignant relationship with his ailing mother to the unanswered puzzles of Nelly’s past.

Set in present-day Australia and mid-twentieth-century India, here is a haunting, multi-layered work that vividly 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 keeps on surprising the reader.

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 that examines the weight of history as well as the different ways of trying to grasp the world.