Related content
AUTHOR
Laura Jean McKay
Laura Jean McKay is a writer and a lecturer in creative writing at…
DiscoverThe Animals in That Country wins the 2021 Arthur C. Clarke Award
Laura Jean McKay’s debut novel The Animals in That Country has won the 2021 Arthur C. Clarke Award for Science Fiction Book of the Year. The annual Arthur C. Clarke Award is given for the best science fiction novel first published in the United Kingdom during the previous year.
Laura has also won the 2021 Victorian Prize for Literature, the 2021 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Fiction, the 2021 ABIA Small Publisher’s Adult Book of the Year Award, and tied for first place for the 2020 Aurealis Awards’ Best Science Fiction Novel. She has been shortlisted for the 2021 Stella Prize, and the 2020 Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction, and has been longlisted for the 2021 Miles Franklin Literary Award.
Congratulations to Laura and all the shortlisted authors.
The Animals in That Country
Out on the road, no one speaks, everything talks.
Hard-drinking, foul-mouthed, and allergic to bullshit, Jean is not your usual grandma. She’s never been good at getting on with other humans, apart from her beloved granddaughter, Kimberly. Instead, she surrounds herself with animals, working as a guide in an outback wildlife park. And although Jean talks to all her charges, she has a particular soft spot for a young dingo called Sue.
As disturbing news arrives of a pandemic sweeping the country, Jean realises this is no ordinary flu: its chief symptom is that its victims begin to understand the language…
