Chez Dom - a small, rundown Tunisian cafe in Paris run by the widow Houria and her niece Sabiha - offers a home away from home for the North African immigrants working at the abattoirs of Vaugiraud. One day a lost Australian tourist, John Patterner, seeks shelter in the cafe from a sudden Parisian rainstorm. John is like no one Sabiha has met before - his calm grey eyes promise her a future she was not yet even aware she wanted. Theirs becomes a contented but unlikely marriage, and yet because they are essentially foreigners to each other, their love story sets in train an irrevocable course of tragic events. Years later, living a small, quiet life in suburban Melbourne, what happened at Vaugiraud seems like a distant, troubling dream to Sabiha and John, who confides the story behind their seemingly ordinary lives to Ken, an ageing, melancholy writer. Lovesong is the story of a marriage, of people coming undone by desire, of ordinary lives and death, love and struggle. Into the wonderfully evoked contemporary settings of Paris and Melbourne, memories of Tunisian family life, culture and its music are tenderly woven.
- ISBN13 9781742371290
- Publish Date 1 November 2009 (first published 1 January 2009)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 22 December 2010
- Publish Country AU
- Imprint Allen & Unwin
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 368
- Language English