A Siberian composer named Valentin comes to a remote roadhouse in the Western Desert to find the narrator of Yilkari, whom he first met the night the Berlin Wall fell. They travel on together, leading us deeper into the desert in this mesmerising, unclassifiable book, co-written by the prize-winning author Nicolas Rothwell and his wife, the acclaimed artist Alison Nampitjinpa Anderson.
Later, he takes us driving on hidden tracks in search of other characters and other stories that transport the mind. He visits the magic mountain, even though it is not on any maps, whose peak seems to draw the light into itself, the heart of life.
Yilkari reveals its secrets, such secrets as it can reveal, through the conversations of its characters and their journeys into landscapes in which space and time are aspects of each other. Their exchanges touch on ways of knowing and speaking and imagining that are only within reach in the desert.
The authors are both characters and guides. This is a book of strange coincidences, of intricate, interlinked dreamings, of chance encounters in living landscapes where the thread of sound is almost too faint to hear when the evening sun is low, the best time for telling stories.
Nicolas Rothwell is the author of Quicksilver, which won a Prime Minister's Literary Award, Belomor, and five other books. He lives in northern Australia.
Alison Nampitjinpa Anderson is a Luritja-Pintupi woman from the Western Desert community of Papunya. She is a prominent artist.
'Reading it once is just the beginning.' Stephen Romei, Saturday Paper
'A fascinating journey of awakening and spiritual discovery.' Jason Steger, Age Booklist
'Telling and powerful...A stunning work of living landscapes, of dreaming, of storytelling to pass on to generations.' Weekend Australian
