The Nowhere Child is a riveting read – a real page-turner. This is the perfect book for the holidays and a great beach read. I was lucky enough to interview Christian White last month and he is as compelling as his novel. Turns out that The Nowhere Child is his first book and his incredible success came as a complete shock. Christian had always wanted to be a writer but by thirty he still hadn’t achieved his ambition. He was writing all the time, and working on screenplays and even planned for The Nowhere Child to be a film. But then the story took hold and he ended up writing it as a novel.
When Christian finished writing The Nowhere Child he wasn’t really sure what to do with the manuscript. A friend suggested he enter it to the Victorian Premier’s Awards for an unpublished novel. With only a small secret hope of getting anywhere, Christian sent in the manuscript. Sometime later, when he received an email from the organisers, he read it as a rejection. It took a second reading for him to realise he’d made the short list. In 2017, Christian won the Victorian Premier’s prize and joined Jane Harper (The Dry, Force of Nature, The Lost Man) and Graeme Simsion (The Rosie Project, The Rosie Effect ) as a new bestseller. The Nowhere Child has now sold into 15 countries and been optioned for a TV mini series. It’s a dream debut for a feisty, face-paced novel. I’m looking forward to Christian’s next book.
