Highway 13
By Fiona McFarlane
Every one of them was a whole world, full of love and curiosity, and every one of these worlds touched hundreds of others.’
A gripping, haunting work about the reverberations of a serial killer’s crimes in the lives of everyday people.
In 1998, an apparently ordinary Australian man is arrested and charged with a series of brutal murders of backpackers along a highway. The news shocks the nation, bringing both horror and resolution to the victims’ families, but its impact travels even further – into the past, as the murders rewrite personal histories, and into the future, as true crime podcasts and biopics tell the story of the crimes.
Highway 13 takes murder as its starting point, but it unfolds to encompass much more: through the investigation of the aftermath of this violence across time and place, from the killer’s home town in country Australia to the tropical Far North, and to Texas and Rome, McFarlane presents an unforgettable, entrancing exploration of the way stories are told and spread, and at what cost.
From the acclaimed author of The Sun Walks Down and The Night Guest comes a captivating account of loss and fear, and their extended echoes in individual lives.
‘These sublime stories have the poise and clarity of classics. As Fiona McFarlane’s characters edge towards revelation or disaster, her artistry shines on every page.’ Michelle de Kretser, author of Scary Monsters
‘In Fiona McFarlane’s gifted hands, this Mobius strip of linked stories bends and twists the crime genre until it is barely recognisable . . . The result is a riveting study of human nature.’ Geraldine Brooks, author of Horse
‘McFarlane expands our understanding, illuminating what it is to be human . . . compulsory reading for anyone who’s ever read (or written) a tale of murder.’ Hayley Scrivenor, author of Girl Falling
‘McFarlane is a ventriloquist in these brilliant stories, voicing our fear and fascination around atrocity, the shocking ordinariness of its perpetrators.’ Kristina Olsson
‘Every chapter is a small masterpiece in this eerie, haunting novel.’ Jack Heath, author of Kill Your Husbands
About the author:
Fiona McFarlane is the author of the novel The Night Guest, which was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award, and a collection of short stories, The High Places, which won the International Dylan Thomas Prize. Her short fiction has been published in the New Yorker, Best Australian Stories and Zoetrope: All-Story. Her most recent novel, The Sun Walks Down, was shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize, the Age Book of the Year Award, the ABIA Award for Literary Fiction Book of the Year and the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards. Born in Sydney, Fiona teaches creative writing at the University of California, Berkeley.
ISBN: 9781761067013
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Credit: https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Fiona-McFarlane-Highway-13-9781761067013
