It is the future, and the earth has seemingly refused to cooperate with humanity, producing only thorn-bearing plants and caustic fogs in abundance. Life is hard for those who still inhabit urban communities. For those who have chosen to live ‘off-grid’ it is subsistence at best, but at least there is some kind of independence.
A woman and her son live alone, surviving as scavengers. Even so, the boy must attend military school like all the other boys. In time he will be shipped off with the rest of them to a distant planet – the Promised Land – to fight the colonising war that is touted as humanity’s only hope.
By chance, the woman meets a young man who has avoided this fate, despite his lack of physical impairment. It appears that he comes from a place of sanctuary. Can he lead her back there – and help her to save her son?
In taut, evocative prose, Maria Takolander has conjured an eerie and compelling story of desolation and hope that resonates in the imagination.
About the Author :
Maria Takolander is an award-winning Finnish-Australian fiction writer and poet. She is the inaugural winner of the Australian Book Review Elizabeth Jolley short-story prize, and her debut collection of short fiction, The Double (Text 2013), was a finalist for the Melbourne Prize for Literature’s ‘Best New Writing Award’. Maria is also the author of four books of poetry, the most recent of which, Trigger Warning (UQP 2021), won a Victorian Premier’s Literary Award and was shortlisted for an Association for the Study of Australian Literature Gold Medal. As a public artist, her words can be found at the Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria in Melbourne and on bronze plaques in Geelong, where she lives with her husband and son.
Review :
'Announces the arrival of a considerable talent.'
'Takolander's stories are beautifully melancholy, full of arresting, dream-like sequences and imagery that stay with one long after the final page is turned.'
'The Double is a compulsively readable book, and Takolander's prose is fluid and engaging.'
‘The Double can be brutal yet remain achingly moving and painfully poignant; there are some outstanding, even breathtaking sentences and scenes in this book.’
'One of the best contemporary short story collections I’ve read, Takolander’s fictions are intellectual, dark, strange and often dystopian.'
'Takolander’s angle is the familiar made strange, and her work has a wry quality that echoes early Atwood’s fierce genius...[Her] craft and skill is stunning.'
