THE DOGS

“John Hughes's new work, an ambitious elaboration of themes contained in his 2020 Miles Franklin-shortlisted novella No One, shares Sebald's eerie sense of simultaneity, albeit with a twist. The Dogs instead contains events from the past given up, like a retreating glacier disgorging human remains. It's a novel in which a hundred years of family history is suddenly thawed into the present.” —Geordie Williamson, The Saturday Paper “The Dogs is not a sequel to No One but it continues the exploration of particular themes: exile, both geographical and emotional, the blood ties between Europe and Australia, the coalescence of the past, present and future and the blessings and burdens of family. It is achingly sad, archly funny and beautifully written.” —Stephen Romei, The Australian “The Dogs is a seductive shaping of memory and imagination, a stunning, moving and intricate family story traversing two continents and multiple generations. It's an allusive and superbly plotted literary fiction, a historical-contemporary cross: widescale and microscopic, metaphysical in aims, with autobiographical imprint.” —Paul Anderson, Newtown Review of Books

Longlist, Miles Franklin Literary Award 2022 Shortlist, Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Fiction 2022 Shortlist, NSW Premier's Literary Award Christina Stead Award for Fiction 2022

“John Hughes' writing is intelligent, delicate and otherworldly, his narrator bumbling, contrary and oddly endearing. A novel in which the past and the present twine, and the vastness of history crystalises in one man's troubled here and now. Michael Shamanov, son of war survivors, inheritor of nameless devastation, drily humorous admitter of his own failings, is presented with a last-chance opportunity to find love and mercy as they must exist in his world – imperfectly. A stealth manoeuvre of the emotions. Beautifully restrained, deeply moving” — Peggy Frew, Miles-Franklin shortlisted author of Hope Farm and Islands