Four hundred years ago, in a small town in rural France, a young woman creates the future in the shape of Rupetta. Part mechanical, part human, Rupetta’s consciousness is tied to the women who wind her. In the years that follow she is bought and sold, borrowed, forgotten and revered. By the twentieth century, the Rupettan four-fold law rules everyone’s lives, but Rupetta—the immortal being on whose existence and history those laws are based—is the keeper of a secret that will tear apart the world her followers have built in her name. The closeness between women is mirrored in the relationship between Henri and Miri, a woman at the college with whom she fall in love, and also between mothers and daughters and grandmothers and granddaughters - a heritage of affection that loops down over the centuries. This stunning new novel by award-winning Australian writer Nike Sulway invokes the great tradition of European fantasy/horror fiction and moves it forward in a superbly imaginative, highly original fashion.
Author
Hi! I am an Australian writer who enjoys reading as much as (perhaps even more than) writing. In 2000, I won the Queensland Premier's Literary Award for Best Emerging Queensland Author for my novel The Bone Flute (under the author name N A Bourke) which was released by UQP in 2001 and subsequently shortlisted in the Commonwealth Writers Awards. My children’s picture book, What the Sky Knows (Illustrated by Stella Danalis), followed in May 2005 and was shortlisted for two separate categories in the 2006 Children’s Book Council of Australia Awards. A third novel, The True Green of Hope was released in August 2005. My most recently published adult novel is Dying in the First Person, released in May, 2016, through Transit Lounge, and my most recent children's book is Winter's Tale, illustrated by Shauna O'Meara and published by Titania in 2019. Rupetta published by Tartarus Press in 2013, won the James Tiptree, Jr Award for a work that explores and expands our understanding of gender. I have a PhD in creative writing from Griffith University, and have taught creative writing in the university sector for more than ten years, with regular dips into other forms of work and life (cooking, mostly).
