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INTO THAT FOREST

Louis Nowra

From one of Australia's foremost literary talents, this is an unforgettable and heartbreaking story about two young girls living in the wild with Tasmanian Tigers.
The story starts in the 1830s with a happy family (mother, father, 6-year-old daughter and an older girl, friend of the family) going on a boating picnic in Tasmania, during the time of whaling and Tasmanian Tiger hunting. But quickly that outing turns to tragedy as the parents drown and the little girls, close to death, are pulled from the seething waters by a Tasmanian Tiger. How the girls are embraced by the Tigers, and learn to live with them, hunt and survive, makes this story an astonishing reading experience, not as devastating and disturbing as Eva Hornung's award-winning Dog Boy, and not as depressing as Sonya Hartnett's vision in Sleeping Dogs and Surrender, but intensely affecting and fiercely life-affirming. Louis Nowra is an award-winning writer and dramatist whose talents allow him to write successful plays, novels, non-fiction and memoir, as well as radio plays, telemovies and film scripts. He lives in Sydney. From the publisher, Erica Wagner: 'I have not been able to stop talking about this fantastic novel. It has completely captured my imagination. Two girls lost in the wilds of Tasmania are saved by Tasmanian tigers, who feed and nurture them. What happens to them, especially when attempts are made to bring them back into the human world, makes absolutely riveting reading. This novel reminds me of reading Sonya Hartnett for the first time – that is, the knowledge that you are in the hands of a master storyteller and that you will be transported into a place both strange and yet utterly believable.'
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Published 2012-09-01 by Allen & Unwin

Comments

French: Gallimard

This is another award contender from Nowra, showing off his boundless range while leaving us to wonder why he has waited so long to venture into these woods. Read more...

I hope that readers who wouldn't normally pick up a book like this are encouraged to give it a try because 'Into That Forest' is a story which deserves to be read. Read more...

The world’s last known Tasmanian tiger died in Hobart Zoo in 1936. Surviving film footage of the marsupial is brief. No sound recordings exist of a thylacine’s bark or cough. Its extinction is one of Australia’s most lamentable tales. Nowra’s sad, dark novel imagines how these carnivores could care for two children lost in the wilderness. Read more...

The first young adult novel from Louis Nowra, a widely celebrated playwright and author, Into That Forest is an extraordinarily imaginative and mesmerising story that snared me completely; day turned into night as I inhaled 170 pages in one sitting. Highly recommended. Read more...