Julia Blackburn

Her first work of fiction, this journey around the writer's father and grandfather is set largely in Mauritius and concerns childhood, madness, fears of miscegenation - and a pig. By the author of "The Emperor's Last Island" and "Daisy Bates in the Desert".

In this fascinatingly imaginative novel, Julia Blackburn has decimated all the rules, creating a magical tale that is part fable, part allegory, part present, part past, and wholly genuine and poetic. The unnamed protagonist has recently lost someone she loved, and her solution is to abandon the present, and the overwhelming pain. The seamless narrative lands her in a medieval seaside village where mermaids wash ashore, devils haunt in packs, a child is born with the head of a fish, and where one day, quite out of nowhere, there emerges a sage and wandering leper. The leper leads a small group of the villagers, including the protagonist, on a journey to Jerusalem, a harrowing pilgrimage that compels all the travelers to confront their deepest selves. Exquisite and lyrical, The Lepers Companions is a heart-rending tale by one of our most fiercely original storytellers.

To escape from her own sadness, a woman finds refuge in a past time. A man's discovery of a mermaid washed up on the sand starts a chain of events that leads three of the villagers to accompany the enigmatic figure of the leper on a pilgrimmage to the Holy Land.

In 1913, when she was 54 years old, Daisy Bates went to live in the deserts of South Australia. In Daisy Bates in the Desert Julia Blackburn explores the ancient and desolate landscape where Ms Bates says she was most happy.

The Emperor's Last Stand is a book about St Helena, an island with a sad, strange history, and about the tangle of stories and myths, absurdities and simple facts that have accumulated around Napoleon and his sojourn here.

In the late 19th century, an English missionary arrives on a remote island in the Indian Ocean, intent on wiping out fornication among the natives. Instead he incurs a curse that strikes first his dark-skinned wife, then his son and grandson. But is the curse supernatural--or a white man's guilty fascination with an alien new world? "A hypnotic, cryptic, haunting exploration of the power of memory."--The Boston Globe

In 1913, at the age of 54, Daisy Bates went to live in the deserts of South Australia. Brilliantly reviewed, astonishingly original, this "eloquent and illuminating portrait of an extraordinary woman" (New York Times Book Review) tells a fascinating, true story in the tradition of Isak Dinesen and Barry Lopez.

In 1814 Napoleon Bonaparte arrived on St. Helenad surreal exile that would last until his death six years later. "A resonant meditation on exile, fame, the stories we tell about ourselves (and) the bigger stories we tell about our great figures."--Los Angeles Times Book Review.