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A beautifully crafted, spellbinding story of love, loss and identity, set in the shadow of the Vietnam War.

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´ The day the great man sang, heat blazed in haloes over Bennelong Point. This is what Pearl will remember, later, this is what she will say: that his voice turned the air holy. Men, sweat-slicked, stood with bowed heads or hung off scaffolds, swatting at flies and tears. Few looked at the singer; they needed all their senses to hear. Needed their whole bodies, skin and eyes and hearts, to absorb what they couldn´t say: that sacredness had returned to this place. It flowed through them on a single human voice, through their bodies and the building that was rising beneath their hands.´

´A shimmering love letter to Sydney , with the husk of the emerging Opera House its beating heart ... Required reading ´ Australian Women´s Weekly

Sydney, 1960s : newspaper reporter Pearl Keogh has been relegated to the women´s pages as punishment for her involvement in the anti-war movement, and is desperate to find her two young brothers before they are conscripted.

Newly arrived from Sweden, Axel Lindquist is set to work as a sculptor on the Sydney Opera House. Haunted by his father´s acts in the Second World War, he seeks solace in his attempts to create a unique piece that will do justice to the vision of J›rn Utzon, the controversial architect of the Opera House´s construction.

Pearl and Axel´s lives orbit and collide, as they both struggle in the eye of the storm. This is a soaring, optimistic novel of art and culture, and of love and fate.

A beautifully crafted, spellbinding story of love, loss and identity, set in the shadow of the Vietnam War, for readers who loved All the Light We Cannot See and The Goldfinch .

Praise for Shell :

´ Destined to become a classic due to the exquisite imagery of [Olsson´s] prose. If the test of contemporary fiction is whether a second reading delivers fresh layers of insight and meaning, the answer here is an unequivocal yes´ Caroline Baum, Sydney Morning Herald , The Best Books of 2018

´This narrative of war and hope, architecture and yearning, and old and new world, makes Shell a novel of energy and enlightenment , and, to boot, a source of delightful reading ´ Thomas Keneally, author of Schindler´s List and In the Name of the Father

´A luminous look at a city at a time of change, a time when the building of the Sydney Opera House was a reach for greatness´ The New York Times

´Olsson´s writing is beautiful , captivating , and is enough in itself to recommend this book ... Her descriptions are vivid , evocative ´ New York Journal of Books

´This is a novel with a sharp eye , a warm heart and sprawling ambitions , painted on the most splendid canvas of all´ The Australian

´War, architecture, guilt, salvation, politics - this book has a little bit of it all... A fascinating look at Australia during the Vietnam War, the creation of the Sydney Opera House, and the ever-present battle between the violence of war and the beauty of art. Recommended ´ Historical Novel Society

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Olsson, Kristina
Kristina Olsson is a journalist and the award-winning author of In One Skin and The China Garden, and two works of non-fiction, Boy, Lost: A Family Memoir and Kilroy was Here. She lives in Brisbane.

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