The Wing of Night is a novel about the strength and failure of faith and memory, about returned soldiers who become exiles in their own country, about how people may become the very opposite of what they imagined themselves to be.
In 1915 a troopship of Light Horsemen sails from Fremantle for the Great War. Two women farewell their men: Elizabeth, with her background of careless wealth, and Bonnie, who is marked by the anxieties of poverty. Neither can predict how the effects of the most brutal fighting at Gallipoli will devastate their lives in the long aftermath of the war. The Wing of Night is a novel about the strength and failure of faith and memory, about returned soldiers who become exiles in their own country, about how people may become the very opposite of what they imagined themselves to be. Brenda Walker writes with a terrible grandeur of the grime and drudge of the battlefield, and of how neither men nor women can be consoled for the wreckage caused by a foreign war.
Brenda Walker is the author of the novels Crush, One More River, Poe's Cat and The Wing of Night. The latter won the 2006 Nita B Kibble Award for an established writer and the 2007 Asher Award. It was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award. Reading by Moonlight, her memoir of reading and healing, won the 2010 Victorian Premiers Award for nonfiction and the 2011 Nita B Kibble Award.
