The Animals In That Country

The Animals In That Country is the winner of the 2021 Victorian Prize for Literature and the 2021 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Fiction. It was also named a Sunday Times Book of the Year and shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award.

Out on the road, no one speaks, everything talks.

Hard-drinking, foul-mouthed, and allergic to bullshit, Jean is not your usual grandma. She's never been good at getting on with other humans, apart from her beloved granddaughter, Kimberly. Instead, she surrounds herself with animals, working as a guide in an outback wildlife park. And although Jean talks to all her charges, she has a particular soft spot for a young dingo called Sue.

As disturbing news arrives of a pandemic sweeping the country, Jean realises this is no ordinary flu—its chief symptom is that its victims begin to understand the language of animals—first mammals, then birds and insects, too. As the flu progresses, the unstoppable voices become overwhelming, and many people begin to lose their minds, including Jean's infected son, Lee. When he takes off with Kimberly, heading south, Jean feels the pull to follow her kin.

Setting off on their trail, with Sue the dingo riding shotgun, they find themselves in a stark, strange world in which the animal apocalypse has only further isolated people from other species. Bold, exhilarating, and wholly original, The Animals In That Country asks what would happen, for better or worse, if we finally understood what animals were saying.

This is a game-changing, life-changing novel, the kind that comes along right when you need it, and compels you to listen to its terrifying poetry. Compulsively readable and yet also pushing the boundaries of what is possible in terms of language and narrative, this is a brilliant and disturbing book that will make you rethink everything you thought you understood about non-human animal sentience and agency. I don't think any reader can ever forget a voice like Sue the dingo's—wise and obscene in equal measure. A triumph. - Ceridwen Dovey, author of Only The Animals

A timely dystopian novel in which a dangerous flu sweeps across Australia, giving those infected the power to speak with animals, with dark, disturbing results. - Maxine Beneba Clarke

A wildly inventive dystopian adventure ... Both a hell of a ride and a revealing thought experiment about our place in the natural world. - Dan Kois, Slate