Launch Speech
Margo Lanagan launched The Silver Road at Conflux in Melbourne, August 2006. Here’s her speech:
I first met Grace at Bill Congreve’s Infinitas bookshop in Parramatta, at a meeting of a writers’ group that I’d been invited to, to talk about my experiences at Clarion West.
Grace had come to the meeting all the way from Varuna, where she was working on this novel, The Silver Road. It gives me great pleasure to come along tonight and hold this finished, and published, and beautiful, book in my hands, and to recommend it to you.
The Silver Road is a fantasy. It is set in one of the most attractive and carefully constructed worlds you are ever likely to explore, echoing of Indian and the Middle East and yet with its own integrity.
The full range of characters you know and love from the fantasy tradition is here: evil kings, lost heirs, warriors male and female, but these are people you haven’t met before, struggling in a net of political intrigue so intricately woven, I’m in awe of the clarity of Grace’s mind. That she has sustained this novel, that she’s pulled off this feat of world-building, plot-making and character creation in such fine style, is cause for celebration, and I invite you to raise your glasses to Grace, and The Silver Road.
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