Mireille Juchau

So they have two this year.

Last year it was Charlotte Wood.

No pressure.

But it's basically a chance for a writer to engage with the work at the Charles Perkins Centre, which is quite diverse.

There's 600 researchers there.

It's an interdisciplinary centre, so they're really interested in drawing in people from

all disciplines to work with the scientists to get better outcomes and better understanding of the things that they're focused on.

He's changed by his contact with these men.

So I think it's interesting at the beginning of the novel, which is all told in third person, so it's omniscient.

We're quite distanced from Richard, and he's presented to us as quite a

He's an older man who's just retired.

He's quite set in his ways.

We're often told what he's having for lunch and his days are quite slow and empty and there's a loneliness to him.

And we're shown over the course of the novel how his interactions with these men who have so little have really only their stories to offer him.

actually alter him quite profoundly as well, which sounds like a cliche, but you really have to sort of see these particular episodes unfold.

And I think Erpenbeck does it really beautifully in the way that she, there isn't massive catharsis.

It's not a novel of kind of huge dramatic change.

It's quite slow, but it's masterfully done.

I think the way you see him slowly defrosting and the way you see him changing his views about their, what he's,

preconceptions about what their stories might be.