Man Out of Time

Shortlisted - Christan Stead Prize for Fiction

Longlisted - The Stella Prize

"Stephanie Bishop’s remarkable novel Man Out of Time explores a man’s breakdown and its effects on his family. It’s shimmering and sorrowful, and the writing is extraordinary." Michelle de Kretser

"Man Out of Time [...] reveals Bishop to be an astonishing talent who can tell a deeply moving story as well as look beneath it to deeper truths." The Saturday Paper

"Stephanie Bishop’s singular talent has made a fearless, beautiful, elegiac gift of a novel." readings.com.au

"Man Out of Time gracefully unpacks the emotional territory that accompanies mental illness and the capacity for trauma to travel through generations. Potent in its subtlety, it is a rich novel that demands the full attention of its readers, rewarding those who invest." Books+Publishing

When Stella’s father, Leon, disappears in September 2001, the police knock at her door. She baulks at their questions, not sure how to answer.

‘What if I just write it down for you.’

The first time Stella sensed that something was wrong was on her ninth birthday. There was an accident, and when she opened her eyes there wasthe tang of blood in her mouth. Leon was beside her. But not quite there. In the winter, when her father finally came home from hospital, he looked different. Looked at her differently.

Now he was missing, and Stella held the key to his discovery. But after all that has passed, his failures and the terrible thingshe has done, could Stella bring herself to help him?

A deeply moving novel about an unsettling bond betweena father and child, of inheritance and destruction and of how the blood we share and the memories we carrydiscolour our view of world ... and ourselves.