The Sun Walks Down
by Fiona McFarlane
☆ Shortlisted for the 2023 Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction
In The Sun Walks Down, a historical novel set in 1883 Australia, the disappearance of a six-year-old boy during a duststorm electrifies an outback community of farmers, artists, servants, cameleers and Aboriginal peoples, and forces a broader reckoning in this uneasy colonial society. This is a slowburn mystery of literary merit, with a complex, multi-layered plot and intense atmospheric effect. The 2023 Walter Scott Prize judges described it as a “rich and empathetic novel” which offered the reader the keys to understanding Australia, summoning its landscape—”at once beautiful and alien”—and its “burning sun” directly onto the page.
Recommendations from our site
“The thing I love most about this book is just how wonderfully, beautifully, cleverly it’s written. The author shifts between characters in a way that doesn’t feel like she’s omniscient. She dives into the perspective of each character. And it’s so cleverly done. I keep reading it as a writer, wanting to analyse how she is doing it, but then I forget and suddenly I’m with someone else. It feels very natural! It’s a wonderful book. It centres on a missing boy, a missing white boy called Denny. He’s six years old and has sort of created his own mythology, which is perhaps what leads him to get lost in this dust storm.” Read more...
The Best Australian Historical Fiction
Kate Kruimink, Novelist
