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LONGLISTED -Miles Franklin Literary Award 2022
When Indigenous lawyer Jasmine decides to take her mother, Della, on a tour of England’s most revered literary sites, Jasmine hopes it will bring them closer together and help them reconcile the past.
Twenty-five years earlier the disappearance of Jasmine’s older sister devastated their tight-knit community. This tragedy returns to haunt Jasmine and Della when another child mysteriously goes missing on Hampstead Heath. As Jasmine immerses herself in the world of her literary idols – including Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters and Virginia Woolf – Della is inspired to rediscover the wisdom of her own culture and storytelling. But sometimes the stories that are not told can become too great to bear.
Ambitious and engrossing, After Story celebrates the extraordinary power of words and the quiet spaces between. We can be ready to listen, but are we ready to hear?
Author: Larissa Behrendt
Paperback 15 August 2022 360 pages
Originally published in trade paperback 2 July 2021
‘After Story is a powerful meditation on family, culture, storytelling and the lingering effects of trauma and grief. This is an extraordinary novel … After Story is sprawling, cerebral and compassionate. It feeds the brain, offers much-needed vicarious travel and leaves the reader with hope that fraught relationships can be mended.’ -Readings
‘This beautifully fashioned novel stands testament to the proposition that good fiction can cut to the chase of complex social problems in ways that might leave an entire library of self-help non-fiction found wanting in its wake.’ -The Canberra Times