As a man searches for his missing dog in the Australian bush, it becomes clear that he, too, is lost, in Michelle de Kretser’s rich and subtle tale
Michelle de Kretser
Given that Michelle de Kretser was born in Sri Lanka, moved to Australia as a teenager and finished her education in Paris, it is no surprise that she was an editor for the Lonely Planet guides
It was during a sabbatical (she set up the Lonely Planet Paris HQ) that she wrote her first novel. ‘Editing is a trade, a technique, a craft,’ she says, ‘and it’s one for which I have great respect. But writing feels like a gift that is granted that might be withdrawn’. Academia rather than writing was her initial aim, but she found she had a ‘magpie mind’ better suited to fiction than research. The pooch in The Lost Dog is a plot device but, nevertheless, canines appear in all her novels: ‘My dogs are the only beings in my books who are drawn directly from life.’
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