Panthers and the Museum of Fire

“Jen Craig has the astonishing ability to make us believe she has held every word of the story in her head, then delivered it onto the page in a seamless whole.”
—Deborah Adelaide, novelist

Complex, urgent, and fascinating, this novel about walking, memory, and writing has earned comparisons from Virginia Woolf to Karl Ove Knausgård. The narrator walks from Glebe to a central Sydney, Australia café to return a manuscript by a recently deceased writer. While she walks, the reader enters the narrator’s entire world: life with family and neighbors, narrow misses with cars, her singular friendships, dinner conversations, and work. We learn of her adolescent desire for maturity and acceptance, and her struggle with religion and anorexia. Photos are provided by Bettina Kaiser.

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Jen Craig’s first novel is Since the Accident (2009). Panthers and the Museum of Fire was long-listed for the 2016 Stella Prize.

Jen Craig’s first novel is Since the Accident (2009). Panthers and the Museum of Fire was long-listed for the 2016 Stella Prize. Bettina Kaiser is a photographer and the founder of the design studio BKA+D.