ABOUT THE BOOK

On a squally afternoon in the winter of 1821 Sarah Dyer gives birth to the strangest child ever seen in Van Diemen's Land, a thing more seal than human. As news of the creature spreads through the colony, incredulous doctors come to peer under Sarah's skirts. The Reverend Mr. Kidney suspects a virgin birth. Mr. Sculley, anatomist and man of science, hails it as the antipodean answer to the elusive Dutch sooterkin.

The pup is a joy to its parents and a welcome companion to their nine-year-old son, Ned, who discovers surprising - and profitable - talents in his whiskery sibling. But when a well-dressed stranger arrives, bearing a modest proposal for the infant's future, no-one foresees the trouble that lies ahead. Tom Gilling's 'The Sooterkin' is a vividly imagined and wickedly funny tale of an upside-down world turned inside out.

Tom Gilling was born in England in 1961 and emigrated to Australia in 1983. His journalism has appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald, the Australian, the Bulletin and Rolling Stone. He lives in Sydney.