Here Until August

Set in an impressive array of locations, these superbly crafted stories examine people caught between places, on the cusp of departure or return.

A masterful collection of heartbreak, travel and seduction from an internationally acclaimed Australian author.

These superbly crafted stories follow the fates of characters who, by choice or by force, are travelling beyond the boundaries of their known worlds. We meet them negotiating reluctant departures, navigating uncertain returns or biding the disquieting calm that often precedes decisive action.

An agoraphobic French émigré watches disturbing terrorist footage as she minds a dog named Chavez. A young couple weather the interiority of a Montreal winter, more attuned to the illicit goings-on of their neighbours than to their own hazy, unfolding futures. A Melbourne writer of real-estate listings reflects on the stifling power of shared history as she wonders what life might be like over the fence. Other stories play out in places just beyond the brink of familiarity—flooded townships and distant lakes, sunlit woodlands or paths bright with ice, places of unpredictable access and spaces scrubbed from maps.

From the Catskill Mountains to New South Wales, the abandoned island outports of Newfoundland to the sprawl of an Australian metropolis, this scintillating collection from one of Australia's most gifted writers shows us how the places we inhabit shape us in ways both remote and intimate.

'Her gorgeous, precise language encourages inner storms.' —The New York Times Book Review

'A nuanced, lyrical and masterful collection from one of Australia's short-fiction greats, Here Until August will leave you breathless.' —Maxine Beneba Clarke

'Here Until August tracks the shimmer of precarious moments and transient moods with devastating precision. In their steady excavation of intimacy, these spacious stories bring Alice Munro to mind. I underlined sentence after sentence as I read—for their beauty, their clarity and their wisdom. Josephine Rowe is a breathtakingly good writer, and this is a marvellous book.' —Michelle de Kretser

'Revelatory ... Rowe's shape shifting, capturing the nuances of different nationalities effortlessly, is almost as remarkable as the precise, delicate and frequently witty prose ... Pitch-perfect examinations of place and psyche from a writer to watch closely.' —Kirkus