The moving new novel from the bestselling author of The Night Guest.

Cass Moriarty is in-conversation with Fiona McFarlane discussing her new novel The Sun Walks Down.

'Gorgeous storytelling and superb characters are among the glories of The Sun Walks Down. Fiona McFarlane is an extraordinary writer, one of the best working today. Her magnificent reworking of the lost child story showcases the profound understanding she brings to people, places and the past. I lived in this wise, majestic novel for days and never wanted it to end.' Michelle de Kretser, twice winner of the Miles Franklin Award for Questions of Travel and The Life to Come

In September 1883, the South Australian town of Fairly huddles under strange, vivid sunsets. Six-year-old Denny Wallace has gone missing during a dust storm, and the whole town is intent on finding him. As they search the desert and mountains for the lost child, the residents of Fairly - newlyweds, landowners, farmers, mothers, artists, Indigenous trackers, cameleers, children, schoolteachers, widows, maids, policemen - explore their own relationships with the complex landscape unsettling history of the Flinders Ranges.

The colonial Australia of The Sun Walks Down is unfamiliar, multicultural, and noisy with opinions, arguments, longings and terrors. It's haunted by many gods - the sun among them, rising and falling on each day that Denny could be found, or lost forever.

Fiona McFarlane is the author of the novel The Night Guest, which was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award, and a collection of short stories, The High Places, which won the International Dylan Thomas Prize. Her short fiction has been published in the New Yorker, Best Australian Stories and Zoetrope: All-Story. Born in Sydney, Fiona teaches creative writing at the University of California, Berkeley.

Both of Cass Moriarty’s novels are available from Avid, including Parting Words and The Promise Seed, which was listed for awards including the 2017 Dublin International Literary Award and the Queensland Literary Awards. Her short fiction and creative non-fiction have been published in The Saturday Paper. She is a writing mentor, book critic and reviewer, and QLA judge, and one of her favourite activities is to host conversations with other authors so that she can learn all their writing secrets!