In this remarkable debut, written as part of an MA in creative writing at Victoria University, Clare Moleta thrusts her readers into a claustrophobic, dystopian future. The setting, she says in a brief note " . . . is Australia but not Australia. Geography, distance and time have been altered; some things moved around and others invented entirely".
Moleta draws on some marquee dystopian precedents - there are echoes of Mad Max, The Hunger Games and Cormac McCarthy's The Road throughout.
The story's told from the point of view of Li - a tough, resilient woman who goes in search of her 8-year-old daughter, Matti, who goes missing after fire engulfs their camp.
Li doesn't know whether Matti's dead or alive but there are reports a group of kids have been seen getting into a bus. That's all the information she needs.
The rest of the novel documents Li's harrowing quest across a barren landscape to find Matti - braving hurricanes, thieves, hunger and the Kafkaesque bureaucracy of the State (Li's most valuable skill is that she can "patch" old phones, a skill she trades on to get phone calls in order to glean any info regarding her daughter's whereabouts; mostly she's put on hold or randomly disconnected.)