The Sun Walks Down

The moving new novel from the bestselling author of The Night Guest.

'Gorgeous storytelling and superb characters are among the glories of The Sun Walks Down. Fiona McFarlane is an extraordinary writer, one of the best working today. Her magnificent reworking of the lost child story showcases the profound understanding she brings to people, places and the past. I lived in this wise, majestic novel for days and never wanted it to end.' Michelle de Kretser, twice winner of the Miles Franklin Award for Questions of Travel and The Life to Come

In September 1883, the South Australian town of Fairly huddles under strange, vivid sunsets and enormous dust storms. One of its own has gone missing - six-year-old Denny Wallace - and the whole town is intent on finding him. As they search the desert and mountains for the lost child, the residents of Fairly - newlyweds, landowners, farmers, mothers, artists, Indigenous trackers, cameleers, children, schoolteachers, widows, maids, policemen - explore their own relationships with the complex landscape of the Flinders Ranges, its unsettling history, and the looming threat of agricultural failure.

The colonial Australia of The Sun Walks Down is unfamiliar, multicultural, and noisy with opinions, arguments, longings, and terrors. It's haunted by many gods - the sun among them, rising and falling on each day in which Denny could be found, or lost forever.

Praise for Fiona McFarlane

'An extraordinary book. It is deeply disturbing and beautifully written - full of joy and melancholy. A rapturous, fearsome fable of grief and love. I willingly accept that I will be haunted by it beauty and its truths for a long time to come.' Susanna Moore on The Night Guest

'The Night Guest is such an accomplished and polished debut. A delicacy and poignancy to the writing is combined with almost unbearable suspense.' Kate Atkinson

'Astonishingly brilliant...Such a very rare voice.' Evie Wyld on The Night Guest

'An extraordinary novel. At once a tender thriller and an exquisitely constructed meditation on time and memory. With The Night Guest, Fiona McFarlane announces herself as a writer to be read, admired, and read again.' Kevin Powers

'Sometimes a debut novel burns brighter than the rest, and offers up the promise of literary greatness. The Night Guest is one of these books.' LA Review of Books

'A debut of uncommon assurance...It seems to rise above the shiny trivia of the last decade's novels...and do what serious fiction can: leave you more interested in the World, more conscious of its enigmas of love and memory, than you were before you read it.' Chicago Tribune

'An enrapturing debut novel . . . Startling and elegant.' Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

'Rich and suspenseful . . . [The Night Guest] is at once a beautifully imagined portrait of isolation and an unsettling psychological thriller.' Publishers Weekly (starred review)

'I have read the opening paragraph of Fiona McFarlane's debut novel three times now--at first, slowly; but then with increasing, heart-pounding speed each time--and I am convinced it's one of the most enticing openings to a novel I've read all year.' David Abrams, The Quivering Pen