2018 - The Life to Come, Michelle de Kretser

Photos: author Michelle de Kretser, the cover of The Life to Come, Michelle in conversation with interviewer Amy Heap offstage, and the onstage One Book One Wagga display.

Michelle is smiling towards the camera, while outside in a garden, and cuddling an adorable dark brown dog.

The book's title and author are written in green and red, with a mosaic cut-glass effect running diagonally through each letter.

Michelle is on the left, chatting with, centre, interviewer Amy Heap and, right, Gala Dinner guest.

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The novel selected for One Book One Wagga 2018 was The Life to Come by Michelle de Kretser.

Pippa is a writer who longs for success. Celeste tries to convince herself that her feelings for her married lover are reciprocated. Ash makes strategic use of his childhood in Sri Lanka but blots out the memory of a tragedy from that time. A dazzling meditation on intimacy, loneliness and our flawed perception of other people.

More than 400 library members borrowed The Life to Come, and more than 120 people attended that year's Gala Dinner, held on May 18th in the Mirage Room at Wagga RSL.

The Life to Come won the Miles Franklin Literary Award 2018, and was shortlisted for the Stella Prize 2018. It was longlisted for Literary Fiction Book of the Year at the Australian Book Industry Awards 2018, shortlisted for the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards - Fiction 2018, and won the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction at the NSW Premier's Literary Awards 2019.