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  • Hachette Australia
  • Hachette Australia
  • Hachette Australia

The Anniversary

Stephanie Bishop

4 Reviews

Rated 0

Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)

A compulsive, atmospheric novel about writing, obsession and desire from the award-winning author of The Other Side of the World

'Eventful, atmospheric, deliciously complex' New York Times

'Elegant and highly accomplished . . . dangerously readable . . . If only all novels were this engaging and this perceptive about human nature' The Guardian

'A literary potboiler about love, obsession, professional rivalry between intimates and the dilemmas confronting a female artist. Riveting' Sydney Morning Herald


There were things that I wanted to say. Things I knew I couldn't say but needed to tell someone. And then the things I knew I should say. What they wanted to hear. There is never only one version.

Novelist JB Blackwood is on a cruise with her husband, Patrick, to celebrate their wedding anniversary. Her one-time professor, Patrick is much older than JB. A maverick when they met, he seemed somehow ageless, as all new gods appear in the eyes of those who worship them. He is a film director. A cult figure. But now his success is starting to wane and JB is on the cusp of winning a major literary prize. Her art, that has forever been overseen by Patrick, is starting to overshadow his.

For days they sail in the sun. They lie about drinking, reading, sleeping, having sex. There is nothing but dark water all around them.

Then a storm hits. When Patrick falls overboard, JB is left alone as the search for Patrick's body, the circumstances of his death and the truth about their marriage begins.


'A surprisingly dark and complex novel. It is intelligent and literary in the best sense of the word' Weekend Australian

'Bejewelled with lovely moments and undeniably exquisite writing' The Saturday Age

'The Anniversary is an example of both deft literary craft and an engrossing read - a feat rarer than it should be' Australian Book Review

'Beguiling and incisive in equal measure' Publishers Weekly

'Compelling and dark, a psychological thriller that makes you want to peel back the layers . . . For fans of Rachel Cusk or Siri Hustvedt'
Books+Publishing

'Impossible to put down'
Daily Mail

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Praise for The Anniversary

  • With its beautiful prose and vivid imagery, the quietness of [The Other Side of the World] belies the intense emotional turmoil at its heart - Good Reading

  • The novel thrums with an elegiac hum and is soft with the shifting light and worn textures of memories - Weekend Australian

  • Bishop bravely dissects what it means to be human, questioning everything taken for granted. So real are her characters and their complex emotions that they go straight to your core and stay with you long after finishing - Readings

  • Stephanie Bishop's remarkable novel Man Out of Time explores a man's breakdown and its effects on his family. It's shimmering and sorrowful, and the writing is extraordinary

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Share a Story with Mum this Mother's Day

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Read an extract from The Anniversary by Stephanie Bishop

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Author Stephanie Bishop tells us about herself and her new book The Other Side of the World

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Stephanie Bishop talks about where the idea for The Other Side of the World came from

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Author Stephanie Bishop tells us about herself and her new book The Other Side of the World

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Stephanie Bishop talks about where the idea for The Other Side of the World came from

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Share a Story with Mum this Mother's Day

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Read an extract from The Anniversary by Stephanie Bishop

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Stephanie Bishop

Stephanie Bishop is a widely acclaimed novelist and critic. She is the award-winning author of three novels, The Singing (2005), The Other Side of the World (2015) and Man Out of Time (2018). Stephanie has won the Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction and the ABIA Literary Fiction Book of the Year. She's also been shortlisted for the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards and the Christina Stead Prize for fiction and longlisted for the Stella Prize. And in 2006 she was named one of the Sydney Morning Herald's Best Young Australian Novelists of the Year. Her work has been translated into eight languages.

Stephanie has received fellowships to Yaddo, Tenjinyama Art Studio, Himachal Pradesh University and Oxford University, where she was a Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Life Writing, and she holds a PhD from Cambridge University. Her essays and fiction have appeared in the London Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, The Monthly and the Sydney Review of Books, among other publications. Her fourth novel, The Anniversary, published internationally in 2023. Stephanie is currently working on her fifth novel.

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