LONGLISTED for the 2020 Colin Roderick Award.

Theywere two little girls on a very big boat.

In the 1930s, Ada and Leyla meet aschildren on a boat bringing migrants from Old Europe to the New World. Theytalk of seeing kangaroos yet end up living miles apart from each other in suburban Sydney. Their separations areoften lengthy but their friendship endures across continents and decades and isa thread in this haunting story of writing, relationships and ageing.

Ada (A.L. Ligeti) becomes an author,searching for a Utopian world, exploring aspects of patriarchy and  gender in her groundbreaking feminist science fiction novel called Turn Left at Venus. That novel and itssequels are  celebrated and muchdiscussed by generations of fans. Memory and imagination fold seamlessly intoone another as Ada keeps moving on, from relationships and places, living inhotels and rental spaces in  Kings Cross,San Francisco, Ubud and elsewhere.

Baranay's emotionally resonant  portrait of  the solitary and artistic  life, lived adventurously across space andtime, triumphantly celebrates the singularity of  being, of age, of imagination, and of the'getting ready' for the ending that life demands.

'A gripping treaty at the crossroads of fictivebiography and speculative fiction about what it means to become old. Nothing is left untouched, unexplored:The life of the mind and the life of the body, inner space and outer space. Itis a complex, magnificently written novel that replicates the way in whichlived life and imagined life keep feeding each other.' - Arianna Dagnino, author of The Afrikaaner and Transcultural Writers and Novels in the Age of Global Mobility