Description
Condition: BRAND NEW
ISBN: 9781760896775
Format: Trade paperback (UK)
Year: 2024
Publisher: Penguin Australia Pty Ltd
Description:
A transformative new collection from the award-winning author of Only the Animals.
'Ceridwen Dovey has a rare, wild genius. The stories in Only the Astronauts are extraordinary, funny, delightful and moving. Dovey sees tenderly what it is to be human - from a perspective that is out-of-this-world imaginative.' Anna Funder
Starman, a lovelorn mannequin orbiting the Sun in his cherry-red car, pines for his creator. The first sculpture ever taken to the Moon is possessed by the spirit of Neil Armstrong. The International Space Station, awaiting deorbit and burial in a spacecraft cemetery beneath the ocean, farewells its last astronauts. A team of tamponauts sets off on a perilous mission to Mars inspired by the courage of their predecessors. The Voyager 1 space probe - carrying its precious Golden Record - is captured by Oortians near the edge of the solar system and drawn into their baroque, glimmering rituals.
By turns joyous and mournful, these object-astronauts are not high priests of the universe but something a little . . . weirder. From their inverted perspectives, they observe humans both intimately and from a great distance, bearing witness to a civilisation unable to live up to its own ideals. And yet each still finds in our planet - in their humans - something worthy of love.
PRAISE FOR CERIDWEN DOVEY'S ONLY THE ANIMALS
'Transmitted to us with a light touch and no trace of sentimentality.' J.M. Coetzee
'Wholly extraordinary.' Michelle de Kretser
'A fable-like surface, and a whole churning world beneath.' The Guardian
ISBN: 9781760896775
Format: Trade paperback (UK)
Year: 2024
Publisher: Penguin Australia Pty Ltd
Description:
A transformative new collection from the award-winning author of Only the Animals.
'Ceridwen Dovey has a rare, wild genius. The stories in Only the Astronauts are extraordinary, funny, delightful and moving. Dovey sees tenderly what it is to be human - from a perspective that is out-of-this-world imaginative.' Anna Funder
Starman, a lovelorn mannequin orbiting the Sun in his cherry-red car, pines for his creator. The first sculpture ever taken to the Moon is possessed by the spirit of Neil Armstrong. The International Space Station, awaiting deorbit and burial in a spacecraft cemetery beneath the ocean, farewells its last astronauts. A team of tamponauts sets off on a perilous mission to Mars inspired by the courage of their predecessors. The Voyager 1 space probe - carrying its precious Golden Record - is captured by Oortians near the edge of the solar system and drawn into their baroque, glimmering rituals.
By turns joyous and mournful, these object-astronauts are not high priests of the universe but something a little . . . weirder. From their inverted perspectives, they observe humans both intimately and from a great distance, bearing witness to a civilisation unable to live up to its own ideals. And yet each still finds in our planet - in their humans - something worthy of love.
PRAISE FOR CERIDWEN DOVEY'S ONLY THE ANIMALS
'Transmitted to us with a light touch and no trace of sentimentality.' J.M. Coetzee
'Wholly extraordinary.' Michelle de Kretser
'A fable-like surface, and a whole churning world beneath.' The Guardian