‘Brooding, surreal and unsettlingly vulnerable, Black Glass marks the arrival of a striking new voice. A brilliant debut.’ — novelist James Bradley (2012 Pascall Prize Winner: Australian Critic of the Year).
Tally and Grace are teenage sisters living on society’s margins, dragged from one no-hope town to the next by their fugitive father. When an explosion rips their lives apart, they flee separately to the city.
The girls had always imagined that beyond the remote regions lay a brighter, luckier world. But if you’re homeless and broke, the city is a dangerous place — where commerce and surveillance rule, and ‘undocs’ face constant danger. Now Tally and Grace must struggle to find each other — or just to survive. Narrated by a cast of unforgettable characters, Black Glass is the work of an exceptional new talent.
Awards and Shortlistings
Winner, Dinny O’Hearn Memorial Prize | Shortlisted, CAL-Scribe Fiction Prize | Highly Commended, 2012 Barbara Jefferis Award | Highly Commended, 2012 Norma K. Hemming Award | Shortlisted for two 2011 Aurealis Awards (Best Fiction and Best YA Fiction).
Praise for Black Glass
‘It’s chock full of clever, original ideas, it’s startlingly vivid and it has just the right amount of sleaze to make it edgy. An excellent debut from a promising young Australian author.’ — Chris Flynn, The Book Show, ABC Radio.
‘A superb debut novel. Mundell has invented a compelling futuristic version of our urban world that is not only original, but frighteningly recognisable. She has populated it with a cast of charismatic characters, notably the resourceful sisters Tally and Grace — truly an endearing and heroic pair.’ — Chris Womersley, author of Bereft, The Low Road and City of Crows.
‘A convincing piece of probable dystopia, ingeniously designed to save some of its best blows for the end. And the survival skills and no-nonsense voice of Tally are a pleasure to follow.’ — Nicholas Reid, Sunday Star Times (NZ).
‘Black Glass presents a dark urban dystopian future of mass surveillance and government control, filled with corruption and morality gone wrong… The tension builds right until the end.’ — Five-star review, Andrew Wrathall, Bookseller & Publisher.
‘The organism of the city is brilliant and compelling… A brave new voice to tweak Australia’s literary scene.’ — Hamish McDougall, The Australian.
‘I loved Black Glass. Meg Mundell skilfully exposes the manipulation and paranoia beneath the city of the future’s gloss, and the marginalised existences of those excluded from the brave new world.’ — Catherine O’Flynn, author of What Was Lost.