The Sun Walks Down

A masterful novel by the prize-winning author of The Night Guest and The High Places, an epic tale of unsettlement, history, myth, love and art.

‘Brilliant, fresh and compulsively readable. It is marvellous.’ Ann Patchett

‘Gorgeous storytelling and superb characters … magnificent’ Michelle de Kretser

In September 1883, a small town in the South Australian outback huddles under strange, vivid sunsets. Six-year-old Denny Wallace has gone missing during a dust storm, and the entire community is caught up in the search for him. As they scour the desert and mountains for the lost child, the residents of Fairly - newlyweds, landowners, farmers, mothers, artists, Indigenous trackers, cameleers, children, schoolteachers, widows, maids, policemen - confront their relationships with each other and with the ancient landscape they inhabit.

The colonial Australia of The Sun Walks Down is unfamiliar, multicultural, and noisy with opinions, arguments, longings and terrors. It’s haunted by many gods - the sun among them, rising and falling on each day in which Denny could be found, or lost forever.