Fire, the new novel from internationally bestselling author John Boyne, is out now from Penguin Random House SA!

Fire is a challenging and visceral narrative that asks the question: can one cataclysmic moment turn someone into a monster?

On the face of it, Freya lives a gilded existence, dancing solely to her own tune. She has all the trappings of wealth and privilege, a responsible job as a surgeon specialising in skin grafts, a beautiful flat in a sought-after development, and a flash car. But it wasn’t always like this. Hers is a life founded on darkness.

Did what happened to Freya as a child one fateful summer influence the adult she would become – or was she always destined to be that person? Was she born with cruelty in her heart or did something force it into being?

In Fire, John Boyne takes the reader on a chilling, uncomfortable but utterly compelling psychological journey to the epicentre of the human condition, asking the age-old question: nurture – or nature?

The book follows on from Boyne’s previous novels Water and Earth, forming the first three in a planned sequence of four novellas.

In a recent interview, Boyne discussed the series as a whole:

What do you hope readers will take away from the Elements series, and how do you think it will resonate with different audiences?

I hope that they’ll find each of the four narrators interesting, even those who are responsible for some terrible actions. The reality is, there are people in the world who commit these heinous acts and unless we understand what drove them to it, we stand little chance of preventing it from happening in the future. As a storyteller, however, I also hope that readers will fully engage with each book and that they will find themselves lost inside the stories and the characters that I’ve created.

• Keep reading: Penguin Random House SA

Categories Fiction International

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