Spirit of Progress
2013 Longlist

Spirit of Progress

artwork-image

ABOUT
THE BOOK

The thing that makes you, it never goes. A sleek high-speed train glides silently through the French countryside, bearing Michael, an Australian writer, and his travelling world of memory and speculation. Melbourne, 1946, calls to him: the pressure cooker of the city during World War II has produced a small creative miracle, and at this pivotal moment the lives of his newly married parents, a group of restless artists, a proud old woman with a tent for a home, a journalist, a gallery owner, a farmer and a factory developer irrevocably intersect. And all the while the Spirit of Progress, the locomotive of the new age, roars through their lives like time′s arrow, pointing to the future and the post-war world only some of them will enter.

ABOUT
THE AUTHOR Steven
Carroll

Steven Carroll is the multi-award-winning author of fifteen novels including A World of Other People (2013), which was the joint winner of the Prime Minister’s Literary Award, and The Time We Have Taken (2007), which was the winner of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for the Southeast Asia and Pacific Region and the Miles Franklin Award in 2008. Forever Young (2015) was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award and the Prime Minister’s Literary Award in 2016. Just to name a few. Steven lives in Melbourne with his partner, the author Fiona Capp, and their son.

Steven Carroll is the multi-award-winning author of fifteen novels including A World of Other People (2013), which was the joint winner of the Prime Minister’s Literary Award, and The Time We Have Taken (2007), which was the winner of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for the Southeast Asia and Pacific Region and the Miles Franklin Award in 2008. Forever Young (2015) was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award and the Prime Minister’s Literary Award in 2016. Just to name a few. Steven lives in Melbourne with his partner, the author Fiona Capp, and their son.

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NOMINATING LIBRARY COMMENTS

Spirit of Progress  was longlisted for the Miles Franklin Award. The author “transmutes the grey facts of daily life into light and luminous art” Geordie Williamson – “The Australian”(review)

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Date published
30/07/2012
Publisher
HarperCollins

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