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ABOUT THE BOOK

About the Book

A father’s obsession. A daughter’s quest.

Eliza Grayling, born in Sydney when the colony itself was still an infant, has lived there all her thirty-two years. Too tall, too stern—too old, now—for marriage, she looks out for her reclusive father, Joshua, and wonders about his past. There is a shadow there: an old enmity.

When Joshua Grayling is offered the chance for a reckoning with his nemesis, Eliza is horrified. It involves a sea voyage with an uncertain, probably violent, outcome. Insanity for an elderly blind man, let alone a drunkard.

Unable to dissuade her father from his mad fixation, Eliza begins to understand she may be forced to go with him. Then she sees the vessel they will be sailing on. And in that instant, the voyage of the Moonbird becomes Eliza’s mission too.

Irresistible prose, unforgettable characters and magnificent, epic storytelling: The Burning Island delivers everything readers have come to expect from Jock Serong. It may be his most moving, compelling novel yet.

EPIGRAPH

Across the tripwire lines of country, we sit in the dark waiting for the call to come or for a length of rope to unfurl.

OMAR SAKR

Sailor’s Knot

MAP

Eadem mutata resurgo

THE INDIAN

THE INDIAN

I had been aware of the man in the corner of my vision for an hour or more.

Dark, but not a native.

He wore no hat and I could see that his hair was deep in retreat above his temples. A thin man, slightly stooped, with a delicate formality to his walk. I’d passed the rows of vendors and bought what I needed. Short conversations, greetings. Bargaining here or there—surely that’s the price for a dozen?—slowing, shifting, turning. But always I could feel the presence out beyond my shoulder. The man never came close enough to hear or to speak: he merely kept in step as I moved.

And I am not someone accustomed to being followed. Lord, you’d die of the tedium.

In the sheds I bought myself a hock of mutton and a pound of potatoes. No, Mr Ross, I am cooking for myself, same as last week. Mr Ross shrank back into his shell, tortoise-man. While he wrapped the meat in long muslin, further out the dark man let the sides of his eyes inform him.

I forced a conversation with the woman who had broad beans. Veda, Vera, Thea. I didn’t want the beans: I wanted to convince myself I was imagining things.

Still there.

He was not discreet. There was a stickiness to his movements that marked him out: I moved, he moved. While the crowd around us shifted and lurched, he was constant as a shadow.