AustLit

'A compelling tale of a young woman's disappearance in 1970s Argentina, The Memory Stones is a sweeping, epic story of a family tragedy whose consequences echo throughout generations

'Buenos Aires, 1976. A long hot summer has trapped the city in a bell jar of humidity. Everything has hardened or softened in the heat: bread grows stale before the bakers can sell it; lettuces wilt on grocers' shelves; lovers too irritable for sex lie pearled in sweat. The garbage collectors haven't been seen since the day of the military coup, and rubbish builds up in the street in mounds; dogs fight amongst the debris at night. In the midst of the heat the Ferrero family escape to the lush expanse of Tigre. Osvaldo, a distinguished middle-aged doctor, and his wife Yolanda, gather with their daughters, sensible Julieta who lives with her husband in Miami, and the beautiful, wilful Graciela - nineteen, radiant, and madly in love with her fianc. Jos.. It would be the last time they were all together.

'For on their return, the military junta starts tightening its grip on the nation, and Osvaldo is forced to flee. Exiled, he can only listen to Yolanda's tales of the terror and anxiety that descends as friends and colleagues disappear overnight. Graciela and Jos. go into hiding, driving Yolanda mad with worry. And then comes the day when Graciela, Jos. and their friends are dragged from their hide-out by plain-clothes policeman, leaving Osvaldo with nothing to do but witness the slow disintegration of his family from afar.

'Beautifully written, carefully observed, The Memory Stones is a devastating portrait of one family's unbearable loss, and a country's resounding silence.' (Publication summary)

'It is night, and two boys are crossing a river that is also a border. They have nothing but the clothes on their backs, their inheritance stitched into the lining of a belt, and the courage of an enormous gamble: that Europe will offer them a future they can no longer wait for in Afghanistan.

Travelling by truck, by boat, by train, by bus and on foot, Aryan and his younger brother Kabir have embarked on an epic journey, clinging to an itinerary they repeat like a mantra so as not to lose their way: Kabul Tehran Istanbul Athens Rome Paris London. There are moments of wonder and adventure but also battles against cold, heat, hunger, violence and exhaustion. Whether they are harvesting half-frozen oranges in Greece, or hiding behind a false wall on a truck to Italy, or sleeping under the rafters of a sawmill in France, the brothers are exploited for their labour, hustled for their money and ignored by almost everyone, except the police.

Hinterland is a novel about two children in the aftermath of trauma; underage, homeless and invisible in a foreign land. It shows what happens when the adult world rushes in, and what our universe looks like from the other side of the glass, to those displaced children who are out there, even now, on the road. Source: Allen & Unwin (Sighted 17/02/2012).