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  • Published: 23 September 2015
  • ISBN: 9781760141622
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 192

Blood Kin




In her stunning debut novel, award-winning author Ceridwen Dovey reveals how humanity's most atavistic impulses – vanity, vengeance and greed – seethe, relentlessly, just beneath the surface of civilization.

Shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize 
A chef, a portraitist and a barber are taken hostage in a coup to overthrow their boss, the President. They are held captive in the President's summer residence in the mountains while far below them, the capital swelters as chaos reigns.
Meanwhile, the chef's daughter, the portraitist's pregnant wife and the barber's lover await their own fates, their love as dangerous a liability as any political affiliation.
In her stunning debut novel, award-winning author Ceridwen Dovey reveals how humanity's most atavistic impulses – vanity, vengeance and greed – seethe, relentlessly, just beneath the surface of civilization.
'A story about how the lightest taste of power so easily stimulates our limitless appetite for sadism.  Dovey . . . presents her case so meticulously and relentlessly that you've got to respect her authority.  New York Times Sunday Book Review
'A lovely, haunting novel, written with great care and precision . . . a really fine debut.'  Colum McCann, author of Let The Great World Spin
'A meticulously constructed story about political corruption and its impact on people's lives . . . ingenious.'  Sydney Morning Herald

  • Published: 23 September 2015
  • ISBN: 9781760141622
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 192

About the author

Ceridwen Dovey

Ceridwen Dovey is a writer based in Sydney. She’s the author of several acclaimed works of fiction (Blood Kin, Only the Animals, In the Garden of the Fugitives, Life After Truth, Once More With Feeling) and non-fiction (On J.M. Coetzee: Writers on Writers and Inner Worlds Outer Spaces: The Working Lives of Others). Her non-fiction essays have been published by newyorker.com, the Smithsonian Magazine, WIRED, Vogue, the Monthly and Alexander, among many others. She’s the recipient of an Australian Museum Eureka Award, and the 2020 & 2021 UNSW Press Bragg Prize for science writing. Her latest book is Mothertongues, a work of literary fiction co-authored with Eliza Bell, and including original songs by Australian songwriter Keppie Coutts.

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