Hand Me Down World

Description

A woman washes ashore in Sicily. She has come from North Africa to find her son, taken from her when he was just days old by his father and stolen away to Berlin. With nothing but her maid's uniform and a knife stashed in a plastic bag, she relies on strangers - some generous, some exploiting - to guide her passage north. These strangers tell of their encounters with a quiet, mysterious woman in a blue coat - each account a different view of the truth, a different truth. And slowly these fragments of a life piece together to create a spellbinding story of the courage of a mother and the versions of truth we create to accommodate our lives. Haunting and beautiful, Hand Me Down World is simply unforgettable.

Awards

Shortlisted for Commonwealth Writers' Prize Best Book - SE Asia and South Pacific 2011. Long-listed for International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award 2011.

Author description

Lloyd Jones's awards include the Katherine Mansfield Memorial fellowship in 1988, the Deutz Medal for Fiction, the Tasmania Pacific Fiction Prize (2003) and the Montana New Zealand Book Award (2001) for The Book of Fame. In 2007 Jones won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Mister Pip, which was also shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.