Ice

An iceberg is towed to the harbor, to the astonishment of colonial Sydney. As it melts, the iceberg is revealed as a tomb to the perfectly preserved body of a young sailor, who died 40 years before.

Here is the story of Malcolm McEacharn, a brilliant businessman who brings joy to early Sydney in the form of an iceberg and who will later bring electricity to Melbourne, become its Lord Mayor, and be one step away from becoming Prime Minister—but he is driven by an obsession that threatens to destroy him and his world. A parallel story set in contemporary Sydney tells of a young biographer who lies in a coma, and her bereft husband's desperate attempts to resurrect her by unearthing the truth about her subject McEacharn. Both stories are redolent with longing, suffused by regret, and illuminated by extraordinary imagery, hypnotic language, and the specter of suspended life in the "mythical country of ice." From the frozen, desolate Antarctic to bustling Victorian London, from the Yorkshire moors to colonial tropical Cairns, to Imperial Japan and to the gritty streets of modern-day Kings Cross, the story walks the line between life and death, fact and fantasy, grief and madness. It is a book about the power of love, told with audacity and breathtaking imaginative power.