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  • Published: 19 March 2018
  • ISBN: 9780143790273
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 608
  • RRP: $24.99

Congo Dawn





An unforgettable story filled with drama, conflict and deep emotion.

You can't go back and change the past. All you have left is the future.

Melbourne secretary Anna Emerson's life is turned upside down when a stranger hands her a plane ticket to the Congo. The newly independent country is in turmoil, Simba rebels are on the move – but the invitation holds a precious clue to the whereabouts of her estranged father.

Dan Miller signs up as a mercenary commando to fight the Communist uprising. He supports the cause, but that's not really why he's there. A devastating tragedy has taken all meaning from his life, and he's got nothing left to lose.

In the Congo, Dan's belief in the war begins to crumble. Anna heads deeper into danger as she travels from a grand colonial mansion to an abandoned hotel on the shores of Lake Tanganyika, to a leprosy mission in the jungle and beyond. Their two paths collide through circumstances more extraordinary than fate.

Inspired by real events, Congo Dawn combines epic drama with an intimate journey into the heart of a fractured family, as two characters, in search of people they lost, at last find a way to come home. It is a landmark novel about good and evil, and the inexhaustible power of love.

  • Published: 19 March 2018
  • ISBN: 9780143790273
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 608
  • RRP: $24.99

About the author

Katherine Scholes

Katherine Scholes is an international bestselling author with over two million books sold. She was born in Tanzania and six of her adult novels are set there, during the Independence era of the 1960s. She was the first artist to travel to Antarctica as a guest of the Australian Antarctic Division. Her novel she wrote afterwards won a New South Wales State Literary Award. The Stone Angel, set in east coast Tasmania, was longlisted in the International Dublin Literary Awards. Her forthcoming novel, One Night at Silver Lake (2026), brings together her two homelands, Tanzania and Tasmania. Her work has been translated into over a dozen languages and includes children’s fiction and non-fiction as well as novels for adults. She has also had a career as a filmmaker.

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Praise for Congo Dawn

Katherine Scholes is one of those rare writers who connects Australia to Africa in creative fiction. This is, in the best sense, a big, lusty novel. But it exceeds most such novels in sensitivity and imagination, in potent narrative and artistic terms

Tom Keneally

Discover more

Article
Creating Congo Dawn

Katherine Scholes reflects on writing uncharted territory.

Article
Congo Dawn book club notes

Transport your book club to Africa with Katherine Scholes’ Congo Dawn.

Article
Katherine Scholes Q&A

The bestselling author on her unyielding love affair with the African continent.