![The Lost Dog](/sites/default/files/styles/2_3_media_tiny/public/images/the_lost_dog.jpg?itok=XjQaVl2V 96w, /sites/default/files/styles/2_3_media_small/public/images/the_lost_dog.jpg?itok=kmUM3fyv 119w, /sites/default/files/styles/2_3_media_medium/public/images/the_lost_dog.jpg?itok=jVNrL28o 155w, /sites/default/files/styles/2_3_media_large/public/images/the_lost_dog.jpg?itok=mjACUgxJ 168w, /sites/default/files/styles/2_3_media_x_large/public/images/the_lost_dog.jpg?itok=8HGEaOZR 212w, /sites/default/files/styles/2_3_media_huge/public/images/the_lost_dog.jpg?itok=kpESWdMB 278w)
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 But writing feels like a gift that is granted that might be withdrawn’.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.’