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The Sisters of Serendib

The powerful, beautifully crafted new novel for 2026 about loss, identity and belonging, from the award-winning author of Untethered.
Brief Description
Three sisters are separated as children. Decades later, with so much lost and changed, can they find their way back to each other? In 1990, a boat of asylum seekers leaves war-torn Sri Lanka, bound for Australia. When a mother dies on the journey, her three... Read More
Format: Paperback / softback
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Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

Three sisters are separated as children. Decades later, with so much lost and changed, can they find their way back to each other?

In 1990, a boat of asylum seekers leaves war-torn Sri Lanka, bound for Australia. When a mother dies on the journey, her three young daughters are separated and scattered across the country.

Years later, the eldest, Janu, still remembers the home she left and the sisters she's lost. Having freed herself from the grip of a painful childhood, she builds a life for herself in a coastal town, running a small shop called Serendib, where the air hums with memory and people come to find what they didn't know they were searching for.

In Melbourne, Samar, the middle sister, dances to speak the words she cannot say, pouring her longing and restlessness into movement, while in Sydney, Maryam, the youngest, finds magic in language, always searching for a place to belong.

As Janu discovers clues to her sisters' identities and begins the quest to bring them together, they all face the question: can something broken for so long ever be made whole again?

Beautiful and heartbreaking, this is the story of women who rise from loss to reclaim their stories, rebuild their lives, and step into the fierce beauty of their own becoming. A powerful new novel from the award-winning author of Untethered.

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9781038939180

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty Ltd

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 02 June 2026

Country: Australia

Imprint: HQ Fiction

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Weight: 250g

Pages: 368

About the Author

Ayesha Inoon is a Sri Lankan-Australian writer whose work is shaped by her rich cultural heritage and lived experience. Born in Colombo, she travelled widely and worked as a journalist in Sri Lanka before migrating to Australia in 2013. Her writing explores themes of identity, belonging, and the resilience of women across cultures. Her debut novel, Untethered - winner of the 2022 ASA/HQ Commercial Fiction Prize and Highly Commended in both the 2024 ACT Book of the Year and the ACT Literary Awards for Fiction - draws partly from her own journey as an immigrant Muslim woman. The novel was also supported by the inaugural Penguin Random House Write It Fellowship in 2019. She lives in Canberra, on Ngunnawal and Ngambri Country with her two children and shares writing updates on Instagram at @ayeshainoon.

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