In April 2008, Australian novelist Julia Leigh – the literature protégée in Cycle 1 of the Rolex Arts Initiative – published her second book, a novella called Disquiet, to critical acclaim. Leigh was mentored by Toni Morrison, winner of the Nobel prize for literature, who has written of her protégée: “Julia Leigh is a sorceress. Her deft prose casts a spell of serene control, while the earth quakes underfoot.”

Disquiet begins with one of the main characters, Olivia, arriving, with her two young children, at her mother’s chateau in rural France for the first time in more than a decade. Soon afterwards, the family is joined by Olivia’s brother Marcus and his wife Sophie – but the reunion is far from joyful. After years of desperately wanting a baby, Sophie has just given birth to a stillborn infant, and she is struggling to overcome her devastation. Meanwhile, Olivia wrestles with her own secrets about the cruel and violent man she married many years before. Reminiscent of the novels of Ian McEwan and J. M. Coetzee, Disquiet is a darkly beautiful and atmospheric story.