Michelle de Kretser Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Writers on Writers Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

Michelle de Kretser
Michelle de Kretser was born in 1957 in Sri Lanka and is a novelist. She moved to Australia at the age of 14. Her dad was Oswald Leslie de Kretser III, a judge of the Supreme Court of Ceylon.

Michelle was educated at Methodist College, Colombo, in Melbourne at Elwood College, and in Paris.

She worked as an editor for Lonely Planet, a travel guides company, and in 1999, while she was on sabbatical, wrote and published “The Rose Grower”, her debut novel.

“The Hamilton Case” won the Tasmania Pacific Prize, the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize (Southeast Asia and Pacific), and the Encore Award (in the UK). “Questions of Travel” won numerous awards, including the 2013 ALS Gold Medal, the 2013 Miles Franklin Award, and the 2013 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Fiction. “The Life to Come” won the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction and the Miles Franklin Award.

“The Rose Grower” is the first stand alone novel and was released in 1999. Michelle, writing with mesmerizing detail and poignancy, delivers a haunting story set against the madness of the French Revolution, a wistful, elegantly rendered novel about unrequited love and personal triumph in a world that’s gone tragically awry.

The 1789 storming of the Bastille has brought France right to the brink of revolution. But in the serene heart of the French province of Gascony, very little’s changed in 100 years, and the events in Paris appear to be just a distant thunder.

Indeed, the dramatic crash landing of Stephen Fletcher (American artist and amateur balloonist) sparks much more excitement. Stephen lands in the pastoral world of a magistrate and his three daughters: precocious and pert Mathilde, ethereal Claire, and sensible and plain Sophie, who lovingly tends to her rose garden while simmering with unfulfilled longings.

While the revolution brings terror, murder, and fear into the isolated Gascon countryside, Stephen finds himself being enchanted by angelic Claire. But he’s also oddly drawn to Sophie, whose compassion and bravery sustains everybody, from her family to the quixotic, tormented physician who adores her quietly. And even while Sophie keeps a tender secret of her own, she works toward realizing yet another miracle of an original repeat-flowering crimson rose, this hopeful symbol of an unblighted future.

“The Hamilton Case” is the second stand alone novel and was released in 2003. This flamboyant beauty that once partied with the Prince of Wales and who is now, during her seventh decade, has just “gone native” in some jungle in Ceylon. An Oxford educated and proud lawyer who unwittingly seals his own professional fate once he dares solve the sensation Hamilton murder case has just rocked the upper echelons of local society. This young woman that retreats from her family and the entire world after her infant brother is discovered having suffocated in his crib.

These are among the linked lives compellingly portrayed in this novel everywhere hailed and praised for its savage wit and dazzling grace. It’s a spellbinding story of duty and family, of identity and legacy. A novel that brilliantly probes the ultimate mystery about what makes us who we are.

“The Lost Dog” is the third stand alone novel and was released in 2007. Tom Loxley (an Indian-Australian professor) is far less concerned with finishing his book about Henry James than he is with finding his dog, who got lost in the Australian bush. Joining his daily hunt is Nelly Zhang, this artist whose husband vanished under mysterious circumstances years before Tom met her. Even though Nelly helps him to search for his beloved pet, Tom is unsure about actually trusting his new friend.

Tom has got preoccupations other than his book, Nelly, and the missing dog, primarily his mom, who suffers from the various indignities of old age. He’s constantly drawn from the cerebral to the primitive, by his mom’s infirmities, and Nelly’s attractions.

This novel makes brilliant use of the conventions of atmosphere and suspense as it leads us to see anew the ever-present conflicts between our minds and our bodies, the past and the present, the civilized and the primal.

“Questions of Travel” is the fourth stand alone novel and was released in 2013. This mesmerizing literary novel charts two incredibly different lives. Laura travels around the world before returning back to Sydney, where she works for a publisher of travel guides. Ravi dreams about being a tourist until he gets pushed out of Sri Lanka by rather devastating events.

Around these two superbly drawn characters, this double narrative assembles an enthralling array of people, stories, and places, from Theo, whose own life plays out in the long shadow of the past; to Hana, this Ethiopian woman determined to reinvent herself in Australia.

Michelle illuminates work, travel, and modern dreams in a brilliant evocation of how we live now.

“The Life to Come” is the fifth stand alone novel and was released in 2017. Set in Sri Lanka, Australia, and France, this is about the stories we tell and don’t tell ourselves as societies, as individuals, and as nations. Driven by this vivid cast of characters, it explores the art of fiction, necessary emigration, and class and ethnic conflict.

Pippa is an Australian writer who longs for the success that her novelist teacher has and eventually comes to fear that she’s missed everything important. In Paris, Celeste attempts convincing herself that her feelings for her married lover are reciprocated. Sri Lankan Christabel, who’s offered a passage to Sydney by Bunty, this old acquaintance, endures her dull job and envisions a much brighter future which rose up, glittered, and then sank back, as she neglects the love that’s right at hand. Ash makes strategic use of his childhood in Sri Lanka, yet blots out the memory of this tragedy from that time and he cannot commit to Cassie, his trusting girlfriend.

The stand alone yet still linked worlds of “The Life to Come” offer up meditations on loneliness, intimacy, and our flawed perception of reality. This is gorgeously observant of physical detail, enormously moving, and often quite funny, this new novel reveals how the shadows cast by both the future and past can transform and distort our present. It’s teeming with life and earned wisdom, exhilaratingly contemporary, with a classic’s feel.