| Faculty of Creative Arts senior lecturer Dr Merlinda Bobis, whose sec... Faculty of Creative Arts senior lecturer Dr Merlinda Bobis, whose second novel The Solemn Lantern Maker will be launched in March |
Merlinda’s second novel launched in March
8 Feb 2008 | Nick Hartgerink
Faculty of Creative Arts senior lecturer and award-winning writer Dr Merlinda Bobis’ new novel will be launched in March.
The Solemn Lantern Maker (Pier 9, Murdoch Books) is Dr Bobis' second novel. Her first, Banana Heart Summer, was shortlisted for the Australian Literarature Society Gold Medal in 2006.
The Solemn Lantern Maker is a raw and hard-hitting tale of our times. Set in the Philippines, it tells the story of 10-year old Noland, a mute lantern maker, who imagines an angel falling from the sky to the slums where he lives. But it is only an American tourist caught in a drive-by shooting of a political journalist.
The magical and seedy collide at a busy intersection in Manila: shimmering lanterns and poverty, Christmas carols and prostitution, dreams of friendship and the global war on terror.
Walkley Award-winning journalist Wendy Bacon will launch The Solemn Lantern Maker - on 4 March at Gleebooks, Sydney and on 7 March at the South Coast Writers' Centre, Wollongong.
Dr Bobis has won many awards, prizes and fellowships for her fiction, poetry and plays, among them the Prix Italia for Rita's Lullaby, the Steele Rudd Award for the Best Published Collection of Australian Short Stories, the Judges' Choice Award at the Bumbershoot Bookfair at the Seattle Arts Festival) and the Philippine National Book Award for White Turtle.
Her two novels will be released in the US by Bantam in 2008 and 2009.
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