The Silicon Tongue follows the award-winning The Word Burner and critically acclaimed The Iron Mouth. These novels explore the relationship between language and identity and tell stories of women’s lives in a time of radical social change. The Silicon Tongue is centred on the life and times of London-born Alice who was brought to New Zealand as a servant in the 1930s. Tricked by the...

There doesn’t seem much point in drawing attention to blackbirds or high tides when five thousand people are said to have died in the towers, when people in wheelchairs had to be left by the able-bodied because the lifts weren’t working and there was no time to step a wheelchair down the flights and flights of stairs … The images play on, over and over, as though if they are repeated enough...

A SPINIFEX FEMINIST CLASSIC

How do you decide to live? Or do others make that decision for you? In this lyrical novel, Beryl Fletcher explores the paradoxes of modern life. As a new academic, Julia finds her beliefs challenged by her students, reinforced by her friend’s mistreatment and dismissed by her family. Just as her mother sought freedom from her family’s rural poverty, Julia and her...