Award winner

Stone Sky Gold Mountain
by Mirandi Riwoe

Set during the gold-rush era in Australia, this remarkable novel is full of unforgettable characters and deals with timeless questions of identity and belonging.

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Overview

Family circumstances force siblings Ying and Lai Yue to flee their home in China to seek their fortunes in Australia. Life on the gold fields is hard, and they soon abandon the diggings and head to nearby Maytown. Once there, Lai Yue gets a job as a carrier on an overland expedition, while Ying finds work in a local store and strikes up a friendship with Meriem, a young white woman with her own troubled past. When a serious crime is committed, suspicion falls on all those who are considered outsiders.

Evoking the rich, unfolding tapestry of Australian life in the late nineteenth century, Stone Sky Gold Mountain is a heartbreaking and universal story about the exiled and displaced, about those who encounter discrimination yet yearn for acceptance.

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Benjamin Law

‘A staggering recreation of an Australian history too few of us know, and a heart-bruising testament of resilience and love. You’ll be gripped – and moved – from the first page.’

Carrie Tiffany

‘Fresh and vivid, absorbing and tragic. Written with great sensitivity for those on the margins of our violent past.’

Kristina Olsson

‘This book is a triumph. An eloquent and moving reminder of a half-forgotten history, the casual cruelties of colonisation and exile, the tenderness of connection. Beautifully observed.’

Melanie Cheng

‘In Stone Sky Gold Mountain, Mirandi Riwoe has resurrected a lost world and woven a tale unlike any I have read before. I recognise this place – the smells, the flora, the fauna – but it has been crafted anew, in rich and glorious detail. Just as she did in The Fish Girl, Riwoe forces us to change our long-held focus, and the result is one of revelation. Every Australian, indeed everyone, should read this groundbreaking book.’

Josephine Wilson

‘This is a wonderful novel. A compelling story of tenderness and brutality, so lightly told, yet deeply felt.’

Clare Wright

‘I devoured this book in one great galloping session. Could. Not. Put. Down. I have lost a night's sleep and gained a world of characters, images and ideas I won't soon forget.’

Jock Serong

‘Language is very, very lyrical and tight ... provides an extremely unusual angle on an Australian story.’

Michael Veitch

‘I wish they'd invent a word for that feeling you get when something lives up to the hype. Because then I could apply that word to Mirandi Riwoe's Stone Sky Gold Mountain. Insightful, sympathetic and just a darn good read. Accolades deserved.’

Mirandi Riwoe

Mirandi Riwoe is the author of the novella The Fish Girl and Stone Sky Gold Mountain, which won the 2020 Queensland Literary Award – Fiction Book Award and the inaugural ARA Historical Novel Prize, and was shortlisted for the 2021 Stella Prize and longlisted for the 2021 Miles Franklin Literary Award. Her work has appeared in Best Australian Stories, Meanjin, Review of Australian Fiction, Griffith Review and Best Summer Stories. Mirandi has a PhD in Creative Writing and Literary Studies and lives in Brisbane.