Cold Enough for Snow

The inaugural winner of The Novel Prize, an international biennial award established by Giramondo (Australia), Fitzcarraldo Editions (UK) and New Directions (USA). Cold Enough for Snow was unanimously chosen from over 1500 entries.

A novel about the relationshipbetween life and art, and betweenlanguage and the inner world howdifficult it is to speak truly, to know and be known by another, and howmuch power and friction lies in the unsaid, especially between a mother and daughter.

A young woman has arranged a holiday with her mother in Japan. They travel by train, visit galleries and churches chosen for their art and architecture, eat together in small cafes and restaurants and walk along the canals at night, on guard against the autumn rain and the prospect of snow. All the while, they talk, or seem to talk: about the weather, horoscopes, clothes and objects; about the mother's family in Hong Kong, and the daughter's own formative experiences. But uncertainties abound. How much is spoken between them, how much is thought but unspoken?

Cold Enough for Snow is a reckoning and an elegy: with extraordinary skill, Au creates an enveloping atmosphere that expresses both the tenderness between mother and daughter, and the distance between them.

Awards

• Winner, The Novel Prize 2020
• Winner, Victorian Premier's Literary Award 2023, Fiction
• Winner, Victorian Prize for Literature 2023
• Shortlisted, Miles Franklin Award 2023
• Shortlisted, ABIA Small Publishers' Adult Book of the Year
• Shortlisted, 2023 BookPeople Adult Fiction Book of the Year
• Shortlisted, Prime Minister's Literary Awards, Fiction 2023

Prescribed text for NSW Syllabus English Advanced & English Standard: HSC 2027-2030: Texts and human experiences.