Some of the biggest turning points in Caroline Brothers’ career as a writer have take place in Scotland, starting with her first visit to Cove Park as a participant in the Fielding Programme, where she completed her first novel, Hinterland. About two Afghan boys walking across Europe, the novel won a Society of Authors award and was adapted for the stage as Flight by the Glasgow-based company Vox Motus. After a sold-out, award-winning run at the 2017 Edinburgh International Festival, it transferred in February to New York, where it was described by the New Yorker magazine as ‘profoundly imaginative… unforgettable in both content and form, a devastating concatenation of dreams and nightmares on the run’.
Caroline Brothers’ second novel, The Memory Stones, explores the impact of disappearance on a family during the ‘dirty war’ in Argentina, and the parallel story of a young woman in flight from the truth. It was featured on BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour, at Book Festivals from Auckland to Edinburgh, and was a unanimous pick for Simon Mayo’s BBC Radio 2 Book Club.
Caroline is delighted to be returning to Cove Park to work on her third novel, provisionally titled The Inheritors, which looks at human relationships under pressure from a changing environment. Cove Park’s location between farmland and loch will inspire and immerse her in the world of the novel, likewise set between farmland and a coastline that once sheltered migratory birds.
Caroline was born in Australia and gained a PhD in history at UCL before joining Reuters and working as a foreign correspondent in Europe and Latin America. She covered migration issues for the International New York Times in Paris, and is the author of the nonfiction work: War and Photography. A nomad at heart, she divides her time between London and Paris.
Image: (c) Rannjan Joawn