AustLit

'The unnamed narrator of Madeleine Watts’ debut novel The Inland Sea (2020) is a recent literature graduate and aspiring writer. Living off the dwindling remains of her student allowance, she plans to get a job, start saving for an airplane ticket overseas. But first she heads to Glebe to buy the first of the novels she will read on the rocks at Gordons Bay over the ‘last hot summer’ of her final months adrift in Sydney.' (Introduction)

'The unnamed narrator of Madeleine Watts’ debut novel is an emergency dispatch phone operator. She’s spending her last year in Sydney making bad decisions: drinking too much, sleeping with the wrong men, wanting to escape overseas but seduced by the hourly rate of shift work and bearing witness to a national climate emergency. Her life is a freight train hurtling towards panic stations.' (Introduction)