The City of Perth Library, UWA Institute of Advanced Studies and Boffins Books are proud to present Josephine Wilson as she speaks about her Miles Franklin Literary Award winning book, Extinctions.

In this compassionate and unapologetically intelligent novel set in Perth, Josephine Wilson explores ageing, adoption, grief, remorse, empathy and self-centredness.

Fred Lothian is a man in denial: a brilliant engineer, now retired and widowed. He knows that ‘for an engineer there was a bridge for every situation’; but solutions for the complexity of human problems elude him. He looks away from his son’s tragic injury and his adopted Aboriginal daughter’s cultural loss. His only intimacy is with his collection of high design modernist objects.

The intervention of his spirited next-door neighbour at his retirement village forces him out of his carapace of self-absorption long enough to bring both comedy and recognition into his life, and some degree of redemption.

Cost: From $10 per person
Book: Online at trybooking.com/318151

Photography credit: Peter Marko.MFLA 39- Credit Peter Marko

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