Her 2018 novel, In the Garden of the Fugitives, described by The New York Times as "an elegant.impressive, thought-provoking novel," was published around the world and longlisted for the 2019 ABIA Awards. The book is on the VCE Literature Text selection (for high school students in Victoria). Her second book, Only the Animals, won the inaugural 2014 Readings New Australian Writing Award, the Steele Rudd Award for a short story collection in the Queensland Literary Awards, and was co-winner of the People's Choice Award for Fiction at the 2015 NSW Premier's Literary Awards. National Book Foundation’s prestigious "5 Under 35" honours list. Her debut novel, Blood Kin, was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Award and selected for the U.S. Born in South Africa, she grew up between South Africa and Australia, went to Harvard University on scholarship as an undergraduate, and did her postgraduate studies in social anthropology at New York University. Read moreĬeridwen is a Sydney-based writer of fiction, creative non-fiction, and in-depth essays and profiles.
Old friends often think they know everything about one another, but time has a way of making us strangers to those we love – and to ourselves. The soul searching begins in earnest at their much-anticipated college reunion weekend on the Harvard campus, when the most infamous member of their class, Frederick – senior advisor and son of the recently elected and loathed US president – turns up dead. And Jomo, founder of a luxury jewellery company, has been carrying an engagement ring around for months, unsure whether his girlfriend is the one. Eloise, now a professor who studies the psychology of happiness, is troubled by her younger wife’s radical politics.
Mariam and Rowan, who married young, are struggling with the demands of family life and starting to regret prioritising meaning over wealth in their careers. Jules, already a famous actor when she arrived on campus, is changing in mysterious ways but won’t share what is haunting her. At their fifteen-year reunion, a group of Harvard graduates – labouring with early middle age, marriage and children, unrealised aspirations and a depressing political climate – rekindle old loves and old resentments.įifteen years after graduating from Harvard, five close friends on the cusp of middle age are still pursuing an elusive happiness and wondering if they’ve wasted their youthful opportunities.