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The Bird's Child

A unique, rich and evocative of novel of love, birds, magic and revenge.

Sydney, 1929: Three people find themselves washed up on the steps of Miss Du Maurier's bohemian boarding house in a once grand terrace in Newtown. Ari is a young Jewish man, a pogrom orphan, who lives under the stern rule of his rabbi uncle, but dreams his father is Houdini. Upon his hand he bears a forbidden mark — a tattoo — and has a secret ambition to be a magician. Finding an injured parrot one day on the street, Ari is unsure of how to care for it, until he meets young runaway Lily, a glimmering girl after his own abracadabra heart. Together they form a magical act, but their lives take a strange twist when wild card Billy, a charming and dangerous drifter twisted by the war, can no longer harbour secret desires of his own.

The Bird's Child is a feat of sleight-of-hand. Birds speak, keys appear from nowhere, boxes spill secrets and the dead talk. This is a magical, stunningly original, irresistible novel — both an achingly beautiful love story and a slowly unfurling mystery of belonging.

  • Format
  • paperback
  • Pages
  • 373
  • Language
  • english
  • ISBN
  • 9781460750001
  • Genres
  • australia, fiction
  • Release date
  • 2015