The Anniversary

There were things that I wanted to say. Things I knew I couldn't say but needed to tell someone. And then the things I knew I should say. What they wanted to hear. There is never only one version.

Novelist JB Blackwood is on a cruise with her husband, Patrick, to celebrate their wedding anniversary. Her one-time professor, Patrick is much older than JB. A maverick when they met, he seemed somehow ageless, as all new gods appear in the eyes of those who worship them. He is a film director. A cult figure. But now his success is starting to wane and JB is on the cusp of winning a major literary prize. Her art, that has been forever overseen by Patrick, is starting to overshadow his.

For days they sail in the sun. They lie about drinking, reading, sleeping, having sex. There is nothing but dark water all around them.

Then a storm hits. When Patrick falls overboard, JB is left alone, as the search for Patrick's body, the circumstances of his death and the truth about their marriage begins.

About the Author

Stephanie Bishop is a widely acclaimed novelist and critic. She is the award-winning author of three novels, The Singing (2005), The Other Side of the World (2015) and Man Out of Time (2018). Stephanie has won the Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction and the ABIA Literary Fiction Book of the Year. She's also been shortlisted for the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards and the Christina Stead Prize for fiction and longlisted for the Stella Prize. And in 2006 she was named one of the Sydney Morning Herald's Best Young Australian Novelists of the Year. Her work has been translated into eight languages.

Stephanie has received fellowships to Yaddo, Tenjinyama Art Studio, Himachal Pradesh University and Oxford University, where she was a Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Life Writing, and she holds a PhD from Cambridge University. Her essays and fiction have appeared in the London Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, The Monthly and the Sydney Review of Books, among other publications. Her fourth novel, The Anniversary, is due for international publication in 2023. Stephanie is currently working on her fifth novel.