The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard

The Great Fire by Shirley HazzardTHE GREAT FIRE is Shirley Hazzard's first novel since THE TRANSIT OF VENUS, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1981. The conflagration of her title is the Second World War. In war torn Asia and stricken Europe, men and women, still young but veterans of harsh experience, must reinvent their lives and expectations, and learn, from their past, to dream again. Some will fulfill their destinies, others will falter. At the centre of the

Layla wishes for someone special to take

Laney skips school and sneaks out of the house to meet her boyfriend

Olive Pink's many beautiful paintings express her intimate knowledge and love of the region's flora: a love that led to her establishing

Alice knows this is it- her big break

Narrated in multiple voices and laced with archival fragments and scholarly interjections

through Christianity's dominance of the European mind to the Renaissance and Enlightenment

After fleeing to Paris with Matthew Fairchild

searching for justice

But they are growing stronger by the day and Harry is running out of time

as well as true-blue Aussie blokes and sheilas

just off the coast of Western Australia

This transcendent book invokes the power of poetry and art to shift hearts and minds