The Living Sea of Waking Dreams

'Striking...brilliantly done' The Times

An ember storm of a novel, this is Booker Prize-winning novelist Richard Flanagan at his most moving-and astonishing-best.

Anna's aged mother is dying - if her three children would just allow it. Forced by their pity to stay alive, she increasingly escapes through her hospital window into visions of horror and delight.

When Anna's finger vanishes and a few months later her knee disappears, Anna too feels the pull of the window. She begins to see that all around her others are similarly vanishing, but no one else notices. All Anna can do is keep her mother alive. But the window keeps opening wider, taking Anna and the reader ever deeper into a strangely beautiful novel about hope, love and orange-bellied parrots.

'One of our greatest living novelists' Washington Post

About the author

Richard Flanagan's novels Death of a River Guide, The Sound of One Hand Clapping, Gould's Book of Fish, The Unknown Terrorist, Wanting, and First Person have received numerous honours and are published in 42 countries. He won the Man Booker Prize for The Narrow Road to the Deep North in 2014.

Summary

Condemned by their pity to living she increasingly escapes through her hospital window into visions of horror and delight. When Anna's finger vanishes and a few months later her knee disappears, Anna too feels the pull of the window.

Report

Pyrotechnic brilliance Daily Mail

Product details

• Authors: Richard Flanagan
• Publisher: Vintage UK
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 13.01.2022
• EAN: 9781529114058
• ISBN: 978-1-5291-1405-8
• No. of pages: 285
• Dimensions: 127 mm x 197 mm x 18 mm
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature; Fiction > Narrative literature > Contemporary literature (from 1945); FICTION / Family Life / General, Climate Change, Australia, FICTION / Cultural Heritage, Family life fiction, Narrative theme: Environmental issues, FICTION / Nature & the Environment