Signs of Life

Dirt Music's Georgie Jutland and Lu Fox return in a brilliant story about people with radically different histories forming awkward, spiky alliances in order to survive.

Alone in her farmhouse at night, Georgie hears noises out on the highway – car doors, voices, weeping. She's recently widowed and a little spooked. It's not just her – the entire world feels wrong, as if the land beneath her feet is dying. It hasn't rained for years. The river has dried up and the olive grove is beginning to wither around her.

Then a figure emerges from the darkness. A man, an Aborigine, seeking help. He says he needs petrol. His sister is out in the car, screaming. They've been sleeping in it for days.

Can Georgie trust them? And what to do when guests settle in and show no inclination to move on?

Heart-rending and funny, Signs of Life is a story about being forced to navigate an uncertain future with only shreds of the past as bearings.

About the Author

Tim Winton has published twenty-one books for adults and children, and his work has been translated into twenty-five languages. Since his first novel, An Open Swimmer, won the Australian/Vogel Award in 1981, he has won the Miles Franklin Award four times (for Shallows, Cloudstreet, Dirt Music and Breath) and twice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize (for The Riders and Dirt Music). He lives in Western Australia.