Dusk

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Set in a remote, cold mountain landscape sometime during the nineteenth century, DUSK follows thirty-seven year old Iris Renshaw and her chronically injured twin brother, Floyd: orphaned children of convicts whose parents’ crimes made them nomadic outcasts.

Riding to the highlands in flight of their reputation and in desperate need of work, they find a town of merino farmers devastated by years of attacks from giant, man-killing pumas. The farmers had originally imported the pumas from South America with the idea of keeping deer under control, but the pumas instead decimated their sheep, slaughtered men and disappeared into the jungle. Now, one puma is left. Her name is Dusk, and there is a bounty on her head.

When Iris hears about Dusk from the charismatic and mysterious tracker Patrick Lees, she quickly realises that her only chance could be to partner with Lees in the hunt for Dusk. But Floyd is unable to move fast, and he distrusts Lees . . .

'A sublime novel of loss and redemption, fight and surrender, that left me in absolute awe ... Arnott asserts himself as one of Australia's finest literary writers’ Hannah Kent, author of Burial Rites

'Magnificent' TIM WINTON, author of Juice

'Starkly beautiful and deeply felt ... the pared-back textures of Dusk’s prose occasionally recall those of Cormac McCarthy' Guardian (Australia)

© Robbie Arnott 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025