The Water Takes

Name: The Water Takes
Brand: Simon & Schuster NZ
SKU: 9781761633324
Price: 31.99 NZD
Availability: InStock

By Sarah Walker

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Brief Description

AN UNIMAGINABLE APOCALYPSE.A SCARED YOUNG GIRL.A STUBBORN OLD WOMAN.NEITHER WILL SURVIVE WITHOUT THE OTHER.Pam is in her mid-seventies, widowed and hiding from the world behind a caustic sense of humour. Her health is declining, and she’s afraid of dying alone, but her most pressing concern is... Read More

Format: Paperback / softback

$31⁹⁹

Elsewhere:

~~$39⁹⁹~~

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The Water Takes

$31⁹⁹

Elsewhere:

~~$39⁹⁹~~

Description

AN UNIMAGINABLE APOCALYPSE.

A SCARED YOUNG GIRL.

A STUBBORN OLD WOMAN.

NEITHER WILL SURVIVE WITHOUT THE OTHER.

Pam is in her mid-seventies, widowed and hiding from the world behind a caustic sense of humour. Her health is declining, and she’s afraid of dying alone, but her most pressing concern is complaining to the council about her waterlogged garden.

When Pam’s ten-year-old neighbour, Charlotte, is foisted upon her, a tentative friendship begins to unfurl, cracking open Pam’s hard exterior.

But the puddles in the garden become pools, and then sinkholes. Nowhere seems safe. With no help coming, Pam and Charlotte can only shelter in place for so long – eventually, they know they must attempt to navigate a catastrophically altered world.

The Water Takes is a work of astonishing literary imagination with the urgent page-turning propulsion of a thriller. Full of surprises and revelations, with a sense of humanity that is never clichéd or sentimental, The Water Takes will make you laugh and cry – and it will stay with you forever.

‘Made me laugh and roar and weep.’ KATE MILDENHALL

'Dizzyingly good.' JACQUELINE BUBLITZ

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9781761633324

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Australia

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 31 March 2026

Country: Australia

Imprint: Summit Books Australia

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Width: 153.0mm

Height: 234.0mm

Weight: 250g

Pages: 304

Collections

Best Sellers at Book Hero Dystopian Fiction Fiction General Fiction In Stock Books In-Stock Fiction Books Literary Fiction New Release Fiction Sarah Walker

About the Author

Sarah Walker is a Naarm/Melbourne-based writer and artist. She writes about anxiety, intimacy and absurdity, in both fiction and non-fiction. She has a particular interest in the body, and the ways in which it escapes our control, as well as how apprehension of disaster impacts our sense of the present. Her first book, The First Time I Thought I Was Dying, a collection of non-fiction essays about the unruly body in late capitalism, won the 2021 Quentin Bryce Award. In 2025, she was awarded the Kill Your Darlings Creative Nonfiction Essay Prize. Sarah is also an award-winning photographer and fine artist, whose work has been commissioned across multiple countries. You can find her work online at sarahwalker.work.

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