Cherrywood: The imaginative and moving new literary novel from an award winning author, for readers of Trent Dalton, Robbie Arnott and Daniel Mason

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From multiple award-winning author, Jock Serong, comes Cherrywood, an imaginative, darkly playful and deeply meaningful delight, a novel about legacy, community, wonder, love and reinvention.

'One rainy Friday evening in the winter of 1993, a taxi swept through the streets of East Melbourne, on its way from the city to Richmond. That year was one of the few remaining when a great deal was known of the world, but not yet so much that the world had become over-known. Small gaps remained...'

Edinburgh, 1916:Thomas Wrenfether, a rich Scottish industrialist, is offered the opportunity to take on a startling project - to build a paddle steamer from European cherrywood on the other side of the world, in booming Melbourne, Australia. But nothing goes according to plan.

Melbourne, 1993. Martha is a lonely, frustrated lawyer. One night on impulse she stops at a strange pub in Fitzroy, The Cherrywood, for a bottle of wine. The building and its inhabitants make an indelible impression, and she slowly begins to deduce odd truths about the pub.

A complex puzzlebox of a novel, this is delicious, rich storytelling, with a dark unusual charm. Cherrywood brings to mind the delicate, witty, character-driven storytelling of Peter Carey's Oscar and Lucinda; the daring of David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas; and a dash of something unworldly a la The Shadow of the Wind - but it is haunting, magical and a true original.

Author Bio

Jock Serong is the author of Quota, winner of the 2015 Ned Kelly Award for Best First Fiction; The Rules of Backyard Cricket, shortlisted for the 2017 Victorian Premier's Award for Fiction, finalist of the 2017 MWA Edgar Awards for Best Paperback Original, and finalist of the 2017 INDIES Adult Mystery Book of the Year; and On the Java Ridge, shortlisted for the 2018 Indie Awards. He has won praise for his historical novels Preservation and The Burning Island, which earned him the ARA Historical Novel Prize, the Colin Roderick Award, and, internationally, the inaugural Staunch Prize (UK) and the Historia Award for Historical Crime Fiction (France).