Shortlisted for the 2022 Miles Franklin Literary Award
Shortlisted for The Voss Literary Prize
Longlisted for the 2022 ABIA Award, Literary Fiction
From one of Australia’s most celebrated authors comes a powerful mother-daughter drama that explores the fault lines between love and control—My Year of Rest and Relaxation meets Freshwater.
Sixteen and pregnant, Karuna finds herself trapped in her mother’s Melbourne public housing apartment for one hundred days, awaiting the birth of her child—and her mother’s next move in a shocking power struggle over who will raise the baby. She writes to her unborn child, so there’s a record of what really happened.
Karuna’s pregnancy is the result of a heady whirlwind of independence, lust, and defiance—but it wasn’t entirely by accident, either. Karuna’s mother, already overprotective, confines her to keep her safe from the outside world—and make sure she can’t get into any more trouble. Stuck inside for endless hours, Karuna battles her mother and herself for a sense of power in her own life, as a new life forms and grows within her. As the due date nears, the question of who will get to raise the baby festers between them.
At times tense and unnerving, One Hundred Days nevertheless brims with humor and warmth. Alice Pung’s authorial voice is crisp and relatable, channeling the angst of youth with grace.
One Hundred Days by Alice Pung (Hardback)
Alice Pung OAM is an award-winning writer based in Melbourne. She is the bestselling author of the memoirs Unpolished Gem and Her Father’s Daughter, and the essay collection Close to Home, and the editor of the anthologies Growing Up Asian in Australia and My First Lesson. Her first novel, Laurinda, won the Ethel Turner Prize at the 2016 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, One Hundred Days was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin and Voss literary prizes and longlisted for an ABIA Award in the category of Literary Fiction. Alice was awarded an Order of Australia Medal for services to literature in 2022.