ABOUT
THE BOOK

On a squally afternoon in the winter of 1821 Sarah Dyer gives birth to the strangest child ever seen in Van Diemen’s Land, a thing more seal than human. As news of the creature spreads through the colony, incredulous doctors come to peer under Sarah’s skirts. The Reverend Mr. Kidney suspects a virgin birth. Mr. Sculley, anatomist and man of science, hails it as the antipodean answer to the elusive Dutch sooterkin.

The pup is a joy to its parents and a welcome companion to their nine-year-old son, Ned, who discovers surprising – and profitable – talents in his whiskery sibling. But when a well-dressed stranger arrives, bearing a modest proposal for the infant’s future, no-one foresees the trouble that lies ahead. Tom Gilling’s ‘The Sooterkin’ is a vividly imagined and wickedly funny tale of an upside-down world turned inside out.