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  • Published: 19 March 2018
  • ISBN: 9780143790273
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 608
  • RRP: $22.99

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: $22.99

About the author

Katherine Scholes

Katherine Scholes is the author of international bestsellers including The Rain Queen, Make Me An Idol, The Stone Angel, The Hunter’s Wife, The Lioness, The Perfect Wife and Congo Dawn. She is particularly popular in Europe, where she has sold over two million books.

Her novel The Blue Chameleon won a New South Wales Premier's Literary Award and The Stone Angel was longlisted in the International Dublin Literary Awards. Her work has been translated into over a dozen languages, and includes children’s titles as well as novels for adults. She has also worked as a documentary filmmaker.

Katherine was born in Tanzania, the daughter of a doctor and an artist. Parts of her childhood were spent camping in remote areas where her father operated a clinic from his Land Rover and her mother painted. When she was ten, the family left Africa, going briefly to England, then migrating to Australia. She now lives in Tasmania with her husband and two sons, but makes regular trips back to her homeland, where many of her novels are set.

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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

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Congo Dawn book club notes

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

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Creating Congo Dawn

Katherine Scholes reflects on writing uncharted territory.

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Katherine Scholes Q&A

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