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A Second Life
Winner of the 2017 Seizure Viva La Novella Prize In a tiny book-lined office backing onto a supermarket in a small town in northern New South Wales, a woman named Acker sits smoking a cigarette and listening to the music of Philip Glass. Others come to her with their stories of violence and pain and through her writing she attempts to salvage what they have lost. A Second Life immerses the reader in a world that is both familiar and forbidding. It unfolds with horror and beauty to reveal a complicated and unforgettable portrait of a woman who moves through this world carrying secret histories, different ways of seeing, and many stories.
The Neighbour
Winner of the 2014 Viva La Novella Prize When Luke is implicated in the tragic death of a child, he struggles to assert his innocence to those around him. While the accident invokes haunting memories of Luke’s late brother, who died when they were children, he strives to maintain a grip on reality as his relationships begin to unravel. Set in contemporary suburbia, The Neighbour is an astute psychological drama that offers a powerful and literary meditation on the nature of guilt and responsibility. Following on from 2013’s successful winner, Midnight Blue and Endlessly Tall by Jane Jervis-Read, Seizure’s Viva La Novella competition is back! This initiative is unique in its support of writers and editors alike. Four talented editors each selected a manuscript to work on from of a pool of over 150 entries. The winning authors were announced at the Emerging Writer’s Festival in Melbourne in June 2014.
Blood and Bone
Winner of the 2014 Viva La Novella Prize With the death of her mother, eleven-year-old Abigail must learn to fend for herself against the cruel stewardship of her father. At war with the local Aboriginals and intent on staking his claim on the land at any cost, what occurs between the two is a stunning powerplay that exposes the limits of the human imagination. Inhabiting the speculative peripheries of the historical record, Blood and Bone is an uncompromising exploration of Australia’s dark history and its legacy. Following on from 2013’s successful winner, Midnight Blue and Endlessly Tall by Jane Jervis-Read, Seizure’s Viva La Novella competition is back! This initiative is unique in its support of writers and editors alike. Four talented editors each selected a manuscript to work on from of a pool of over 150 entries. The winning authors were announced at the Emerging Writer’s Festival in Melbourne in June 2014.
Formaldehyde
Winner of the 2015 Seizure Viva La Novella Prize ‘Original, intelligent and compelling – a rare combination. Formaldehyde pulls off a complex narrative with frequent time and point-of-view shifts without ever losing the reader. For a novella that borders on the Kafkaesque, it has a good deal of heart. The interconnecting stories are handled adroitly – the clever structure never gets in the way of the writing, which is sharply observed, assured and witty. Smart but never showy. The most original novel I’ve read for some time.’ – Graeme Simsion ‘Immerse yourself in Jane Rawson’s Formaldehyde if you like the seriously weird or the creepily wonderful. This story has small but persistent claws; under cover of its smooth, conversational narration you will be clasped and dragged into some tough, strange places. Let it take you there. Let it blow your tiny mind.’ – Margo Lanagan ‘Skipping across different times and genres, Formaldehyde is a wonderfully strange and inventive story of love, loss and severed limbs.’ – Ryan O’Neill
Corfu
‘House in Gastouri for rent for 2 mths. Occupant travelling. Reasonable rent.’ In a village on the island of Corfu, alone in the cottage of a man he’s never met, a young Australian actor pieces together the strange life story of the Australian writer whose house he’s living in. As he explores his surroundings and makes new friends, his own life begins to appear to him like an illuminating shadowplay of his absent host’s. Set in the physical landscapes of the Greek islands, Adelaide and the suburbs of London, Robert Dessaix’s second novel is about the nature of friendship, love, the ordinary and extraordinary. At its core is a perfectly placed meditation on literary landscapes – Homer, Sappho, Cavafy and Chekhov – and the part art can play in making our lives beautiful. Praise for Corfu by Robert Dessaix ‘Robert Dessaix is one of Australia’s finest writers, as this sad, funny and moving novel proves.’ John Banville ‘Robert Dessaix is some kind of national treasure because he represents with a kind of Helpmann-like elegance and virtuosity the side of our sensibilities we publicly repress.’ Australian Book Review
Welcome to Orphancorp
Winner of the 2015 Seizure Viva La Novella Prize ‘Takes all of your dystopian nightmares and connects them to a mother lode of pure emotional intensity. There’s so much keen detail here about the cruel logic of oppressive institutions, you’ll feel Mirii’s yearning for freedom in your bones – and you’ll rejoice at every tiny moment of escape that she achieves. Welcome to Orphancorp is harrowing, scarily real, and ultimately super moving.’ – Charlie Jane Anders (i09) ‘Punchy, crunchy, sexy and smart, Welcome to Orphancorp is a short, sharp shock of a story with bruised-but-not-broken characters and a bonsai dystopia you can actually believe in. Marlee Jane Ward is a writer of...
Sideshow
Winner of the 2014 Viva La Novella Prize From Rio to Oostend to Amsterdam and beyond, a troupe of acrobats travel the world, performing miracles in the air, enthralling audiences. In between gigs, they drink, play and taunt each other. They get bored. They get up to no good. Then they jump on a plane to do it all again somewhere else. Sideshow is an hilarious and rollicking take on the thrill and drudgery of a life on the road and on what it takes to perform day after day after day … Following on from 2013’s successful winner, Midnight Blue and Endlessly Tall by Jane Jervis-Read, Seizure’s Viva La Novella competition is back! This initiative is unique in its support of writers and editors alike. Four talented editors each selected a manuscript to work on from of a pool of over 150 entries. The winning authors were announced at the Emerging Writer’s Festival in Melbourne in June 2014.
Twilight of Love
Winner of the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award Winner of the Margaret Scott Prize For forty years, until the day he died, Ivan Turgenev, one of the greatest novelists of Russia’s Golden Age, was passionately devoted to the diva Pauline Viardot. He followed her and her husband around Europe, even living with them amicably at times as part of their household. Yet as far as we know, the relationship with Pauline was chaste. What then did Turgenev mean by ‘love’, the word at the core of his life and work? In a remarkable work of memoir, literary biography and travel writing, Robert Dessaix has found the pulse that still quickened Turgenev’s age, but has failed in ours. Praise for Twilight of Love by Robert Dessaix ‘The most inventive portrait of a writer’s life and legacy since Flaubert’s Parrot.’ The Independent ‘A marvellous and unusual book.’ The Sunday Times
A Mother's Disgrace
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The Fish Girl
Winner of the 2017 Seizure Viva La Novella Prize Sparked by the description of a ‘Malay trollope’ in W. Somerset Maugham’s story, ‘The Four Dutchmen’, Mirandi Riwoe’s novella, The Fish Girl, tells of an Indonesian girl whose life is changed irrevocably when she moves from a small fishing village to work in the house of a Dutch merchant. There she finds both hardship and tenderness as her traditional past and colonial present collide. Told with an exquisitely restrained voice and coloured with lush description, this moving book will stay with you long after the last page.
