The Breeding Season

(Paperback)

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'Dark and poetic . . . beautiful writing.' - Alice Sebold, author of the international bestseller The Lovely Bones

'Astonishing. The writing is visceral and affecting, the sentences muscular and beating with a linguistic pulse which makes the book feel like a live creature. The Breeding Season is a creature that might, in turn, rip your heart out or blanket you in a comforting hug. Craft like this is rare and magical.' - Krissy Kneen, award-winning author of Wintering

The rains come to Brisbane just as Elise and Dan descend into grief. Elise, a scientist, believes that isolation and punishing fieldwork will heal her pain. Her husband Dan, a writer, questions the truths of his life, and looks to art for answers. Worlds apart, Elise and Dan must find a way to forgive themselves and each other before it's too late.

An astounding debut novel that forensically and poetically explores the intersections of art and science, sex and death, and the heartbreaking complexity of love. The Breeding Season marks the arrival of a thrilling new talent in Australian literature.

Reviews

'Amanda is exploring what we mean when we say transformation - in life as well as by and through the artistic process - and her writing reflects her profound understanding of the ways in which the bodies of women "carry" trauma, loss, grief, illness, birth, death and love.' Lidia Yuknavitch, award-winning author of The Book of Joan

Author Bio

Amanda Niehaus is a scientist and writer living in Brisbane, Australia. She has a PhD in ecological physiology, a branch of biology that examines the effects of environments on bodies, and most of her research has focused on metamorphosis or the nexus of sex and death. Amanda is interested in the interplay between scientific concepts and human bodies, desires, and fears. Her essays, stories, and poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Creative Nonfiction, AGNI, NOON Annual, Griffith Review, The Writer, and Overland, among others; have been anthologised in Best Australian Essays; and her story "Breeding Season" (on which this novel is based) won the 2017 VU Short Story Prize. The Breeding Season is her first novel.