The art historian Noah Glass, having just returned from a trip to Sicily, is discovered floating face down in the swimming pool at his Sydney apartment block. His adult children, Martin and Evie, must come to terms with the shock of their father’s death. But a sculpture has gone missing from a museum in Palermo, and Noah is a suspect. The police are investigating.

None of it makes any sense. Martin sets off to Palermo in search of answers about his father’s activities, while Evie moves into Noah’s apartment, waiting to learn where her life might take her. Retracing their father’s steps in their own way, neither of his children can see the path ahead.

Gail Jones’s mesmerising new novel tells a story about parents and children, and explores the overlapping patterns that life makes. The Death of Noah Glass is about love and art, about grief and happiness, about memory and the mystery of time.

The author of seven novels and two collections of stories, Gail Jones is one of Australia’s most celebrated writers. Her work has been translated into twelve languages, awarded several prizes in Australia. Internationally her fiction has been longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Orange Prize and shortlisted for the IMPAC Award and the Prix Femina Étranger. She lives in Glebe, NSW.

‘Told masterfully from the perspective of three finely drawn characters, The Death of Noah Glass combines an enjoyable escapade involving art theft, mafia conspiracy, romance and a suspicious death with a literary exploration of grief, identity and the power of the past to damage present lives. Fans of Jones will not be disappointed, and new readers should find much to recommend it.’ Books+Publishing

‘Jones is one of our greatest writers—for her enormous wisdom and insight as well as the shimmering intensity of her descriptive language.’ West Australian

‘In all of Gail Jones’s writing, words bump up against images from art and cinema—visual keys to convey what narrative may not.’ Saturday Paper

‘The Death of Noah Glass is among (Jones’s) finest work and I expect it will be among this year’s outstanding novels.’ Australian

‘The plot is one of Jones’s most straightforward, but as always it is the links and echoes, the patterns that she sees in life and the way such patterns are represented and become part of our internal landscape that inform and fascinate, and make her work so rewarding.’ Adelaide Advertiser

‘The Death of Noah Glass is a superb novel full of sadness and mystery. It further confirms Gail Jones’s reputation as one of our great writers.’ Readings

‘…Swooningly lyrical, carrying the reader along in the wake of its beauty.’ Australian Book Review

‘This polished, pensive novel that swirls so much about, tantalising with implications amid the patterned intricacy of linked scenes, returning symbols and motifs. It’s a book that needs to be read closely…The Death of Noah Glass is engaging. It’s a book about ways of seeing and about the gaps that persist between vision and understanding. And in the end this novel—which is dedicated to the memory of Jones’s father—is also about patrimony as the pattern and measure that fathers leave behind them.’ Saturday Paper