Each year Sydney welcomes hundreds of authors, journalists, writers and public intellectuals to speak at the weeklong festival. This year, artistic director Michaela McGuire is inviting 45 international guests and 350 homegrown writers to Carriageworks, and other venues across Sydney. Can’t wait to get stuck into some exciting new fiction? McGuire has picked out two thrillers to devour before the 22nd Sydney Writers’ Festival kicks off on Monday April 29.
My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite
“This sly, sinister thriller is for everyone who couldn’t get enough of Killing Eve. Korede, a Nigerian nurse, has always been irritated by her older sister, Ayoola: strikingly beautiful, the favourite child, and now she won’t stop killing her boyfriends, leaving Korede to clean up the mess. Korede is secretly in love with a doctor at her hospital, but one day he meets Ayoola and asks for her phone number. Told with deadpan wit, this brief, elegant novel is one of my stand-out reads of the year.”
Wintering by Krissy Kneen
“Krissy Kneen is one of Australia’s most inventive writers, and her latest is a chilling thriller set in small-town Tasmania. When Jessica’s abusive partner Matthew disappears into the forest, she is bereft. Police investigations go nowhere and everyone (except Jessica) assume he’s taken off with another woman, but then a group of widows reach out and share their own stories of their disappeared men, whom they claim have been transformed by the wilderness into literal monsters. Coolly and elegantly told, this exquisite novel grapples with themes of domestic violence and grief in a way that manages to be both completely serious and beautifully dream-like.”
Tickets are already on sale for the 22nd Sydney Writers' Festival. Snap up your favourites before they're gone.