Jessica Au,
for The Heron
Jessica Au, credit: Charlie Kinross
Jessica Au has worked as a writer, editor and bookseller. Her novel Cold Enough for Snow (2022) won the inaugural Novel Prize and was published by Giramondo, New Directions and Fitzcarraldo Editions, with translations in nineteen languages. It won the Victorian Prize for Literature and the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Fiction.
The Heron
The Heron is a novel about the ancient world and the present day, the nature of faith and reality, exile and return. Taking place across three continents – Australia, Asia, and Europe – it follows a woman as she moves through the different phases of half a life, from the universities of Paris to the deep monasteries of China. In these places, she encounters the remnants of history: myth and empire, animal and human, and cycles of rebirth. And in each, she asks, and is asked, questions about the notions of duty and freedom.