The bestselling author of Room fashions a cast of colourful characters—who inhabit worlds as diverse as Puritan Massachusetts and 1960s Toronto—each on their own extraordinary journey Gold miner. Counterfeiter. Slave. Dishwasher. Prostitute. Attorney. Sculptor. Mercenary. Elephant. Corpse. The fascinating characters that roam across the pages of Emma Donoghue’s stories have all gone astray: they are emigrants, runaways, drifters, lovers oldand new. They cross other borders, too—those of race, law, sex and sanity. They travel for love or money, incognito or under duress. With rich detail, the celebrated author of Room takes us from Puritan Massachusetts to the Yukon gold rush, from antebellum Louisiana to a 1960s Toronto highway. Astray offers us a surprising and movinghistory for restless times. Reviews: “Emma Donoghue is one of the great literary ventriloquists of our time. Her imagination is kaleidoscopic. She steps borders and boundaries with great ease and style. In her hands the centuries dissolve, and then they crystallize back again into powerful wordson the page.” —COLUM McCANN “Emma Donoghue writes books that are unlike anything I have ever seen, and Astray is no exception.” —ANN PATCHETT About the Author: Emma Donoghue was born in Dublin and lived in England for many years before moving to Canada. She writes in many genres, including theatre, radio drama and literary history, but is best known for her fiction, both historical (Slammerkin, The Sealed Letter, Astray, Frog Music) and contemporary (Stir-fry, Hood, Landing, Touchy Subjects). Her seventh novel, Room, won the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize (Canada and the Caribbean region) and was shortlisted for the Man Booker and Orange Prizes. It sold more than two million copies. Donoghue scripted the film adaptation, a Canadian-Irish film by Lenny Abrahamson starring Brie Larson, which was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture. |
