Shallows

Tim Winton brings the landscape to life in Shallows, a historical fiction novel about pride and loneliness.

One hundred and fifty years after the establishment of land-based whaling in Australia, its last outpost is Angelus, a small town already struggling for survival. Long-dormant passions are awakened by the arrival of the conservationists, who threaten the town’s livelihood and disturb the fragile peace under which its inhabitants live.


‘A moving and powerful elegy . . . Winton writes vividly, and with courage, about serious matters in a cynical world.’ –Observer

Shallows is set in a small whaling town in Western Australia, where land-based whaling has been a tradition for over 150 years. When Queenie Cookson decides to join an antiwhaling protest group, she defies her husband, her ancestry, and her community. Winner of the prestigious Miles Franklin Award in Australia, this eloquent and moving novel speaks with immediacy and passion of the conflict between the values of a closeknit, traditional society and the evolving mores of the wider world.

"The world here, the rainy, closed, quiet, claustrophobic world of the southern beach town just a long stone's throw away from Antarctica, is perfectly evoked. . . . The elegance of language, the grandeur of the nature being described . . . all this is dazzling, dazzling. It makes the heart pound."--Carolyn See, Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Animating all 150 years of the settlement's history, [this novel] carries the symbolic weight of its subject matter--of whales and water and meaning of life--as lightly as a wind off the sea. . . . Shallows deserves to find a permanent place as a major work of Australian literature."--Elizabeth Ward, Washington Post Book World