Author(s): Else Fitzgerald

Short Stories

Grief, loss, pain, love, and the future - an achingly human debut short story collection, from the winner of the 2019 Richell Prize. 'Thrilling, prescient, and deeply moving ... an electrifying new voice in Australian fiction.' Emily Bitto 'clear eyes, sharp intellect and deep sorrow - both lament and protest song.' Kate Mildenhall 'An exquisite elegy for the world we know, and the world we know is to come ... delicate, precise and heartbreaking.' Briohny Doyle 'A funny, tough, restless author for our times ... intimate, surprising and sly.' Ronnie Scott 'Suffused with sensuality, riven with loss.' Rose Michael 'A fireworks show of bursting ideas. The strength of this book is more than its beautiful prose, characterisation and concept: here is an emerging writer who has captured the heart of humanity in crisis with such insight that it feels like a revelation.' Richell Prize Judges, awarding Everything Feels Like the End of the World the 2019 prize Everything Feels Like the End of the World is a collection of short speculative fiction exploring possible futures from an Australia not so different from our present day to one thousands of years into an unrecognisable future. At the heart of each story is the anchor of what it means to be human: grief, loss, pain and love. A young woman is faced with a terrible choice about her pregnancy in a community ravaged by doubt. An engineer working on a solar shield protecting the Earth shares memories of their lover with an AI companion. Two archivists must decide what is worth saving when the world is flooded by rising sea levels. In a heavily policed state that preferences the human and punishes the different, a mother gives herself up to save her transgenic child. These transformative stories are both epic and granular, and forever astonishing in their imaginative detail, sense of revelation and emotional connection. They herald the arrival of a stunning new voice.