The Island

A dazzling portrait of displacement, of love, and of longing from one of Australia’s most significant and overlooked women writers.

Melina was born abroad and raised on the island. She asks her Aunt Niki about life before. She notices how people look at her, strain to understand her. She is full of longing for unknown things. The island occupies a liminal space between Melina’s present moment and memories of the place her relatives still call home. 

Originally published in 1984, The Island is considered an overlooked masterpiece of Australian fiction. In prose charged with feeling and sharp with observation, Kefala captures a portrait of exile and otherness.

Antigone Kefala (1931–2022) was born into a family of musicians in Brăila, Romania, and aspired to be an actor. Following the occupation by the Soviet Union, her family fled Romania, first escaping to Greece and living in refugee camps there. She moved to New Zealand before arriving in Sydney in 1959, where she lived until her death. A poet, novelist, and diarist, she has been described as “one of the most significant of the Australian writers who have come from elsewhere” and a “cultural visionary,” mapping the experiences of exile, displacement, and otherness.

Madeleine Watts grew up in Sydney, Australia, and currently lives in New York. She has an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University, and her fiction has been published The White Review & The Lifted Brow. Her novella Afraid of Waking It was awarded the Griffith Review Novella Prize. Her debut novel The Inland Sea was shortlisted for the 2021 Miles Franklin Literary Award and the UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing. Her non-fiction has appeared The Believer, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Literary Hub.