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  • Published: 4 August 2020
  • ISBN: 9781760144975
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 272

Migrations




For readers of Station Eleven and Everything I Never Told You, a debut novel set on the brink of catastrophe, as a young woman chases the world’s last birds – and her own final chance for redemption.
Best Fiction of 2020 | Amazon.com editors’ pick

‘An extraordinary novel… as beautiful and as wrenching as anything I’ve ever read.’ Emily St John Mandel

‘This novel is enchanting, but not in some safe, fairytale sense. Charlotte McConaghy has harnessed the rough magic that sears our souls. I recommend The Last Migration with my whole heart.’ Geraldine Brooks

For readers of Station Eleven and Everything I Never Told You, a debut novel set on the brink of catastrophe, as a young woman chases the world’s last birds – and her own final chance for redemption.

A dark past. An impossible journey. The will to survive.

How far you would you go for love? Franny Stone is determined to go to the end of the earth, following the last of the Arctic terns on what may be their final migration to Antarctica.

As animal populations plummet and commercial fishing faces prohibition, Franny talks her way onto one of the few remaining boats heading south. But as she and the eccentric crew travel further from shore and safety, the dark secrets of Franny’s life begin to unspool. A daughter’s yearning search for her mother. An impulsive, passionate marriage. A shocking crime. Haunted by love and violence, Franny must confront what she is really running towards – and from.

Previously published as The Last Migration, this is a wild, gripping and deeply moving novel from a brilliant young writer. From the west coast of Ireland to Australia and remote Greenland, through crashing Atlantic swells to the bottom of the world, this is an ode to the wild places and creatures now threatened, and an epic story of the possibility of hope against all odds.

‘Transporting’ (New York Times) · ‘Hopeful’ (Washington Post) · ‘Powerful’ (Los Angeles Times) · ‘Thrilling’ (TIME) · ‘Tantalizingly beautiful’ (Elle) · ‘Suspenseful’ (Vogue) · ‘Aching and poignant’ (Guardian)

  • Published: 4 August 2020
  • ISBN: 9781760144975
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 272

About the author

Charlotte McConaghy

Charlotte McConaghy is the author of the New York Times Bestseller Once There Were Wolves, winner of the Indie Book Award for Fiction 2022 and a Nautilus Gold Award, and the international bestseller Migrations, a TIME Magazine Best Book of the Year and the Amazon.com Best Fiction Book of the Year for 2020, which is being translated into over twenty languages and adapted for film. She has both a Graduate Degree in Screenwriting and a Masters Degree in Screen Arts, and lives in Sydney, Australia with her partner and son.

Also by Charlotte McConaghy

See all

Praise for Migrations

An extraordinary novel… as beautiful and as wrenching as anything I’ve ever read.

Emily St John Mandel

This novel is enchanting, but not in some safe, fairytale sense. Charlotte McConaghy has harnessed the rough magic that sears our souls. I recommend The Last Migration with my whole heart.

Geraldine Brooks

The Last Migration is a wonder. I read it in a gasp. There is hope in these pages; a balm for these troubled times. McConaghy's words cut through to the bone.

Lara Prescott, New York Times bestselling author of The Secrets we Kept

A work of first-rate climate fiction, also a clever reimagining of Moby-Dick … Sea yarns have been the exclusive literary domain of men for far too long, and McConaghy deserves extra credit for sounding the oceanic depths of the female soul.

New York Times

A visceral experience, full of beauty and strength that shines through the anguish.

The Booktopian

An aching and poignant book, and one that’s pressing in its timeliness.

Fiona Wright, Guardian

McConaghy creates a detailed portrait of a woman on the cusp of collapse, consumed with a world that is every bit as broken as she is. The Last Migration offers a grim window into a future that doesn’t feel very removed from our own. In understanding how nature can heal us, McConaghy underlines why it urgently needs to be protected.

Time

When grappling with ecological collapse on a global scale, the stakes are literally epoch-ending, and in McConaghy’s hands, they are matched with the kind of heart-in-your-mouth high drama that pushes a reviewer to read long past lights out.

Sydney Morning Herald

Stunning… The Last Migration was written for the Earth’s wild creatures. Franny Stone is a compelling character… an Ishmael of sorts.

The Australian

A work of first-rate climate fiction, also a clever reimagining of Moby-Dick . . . Sea yarns have been the exclusive literary domain of men for far too long, and McConaghy deserves extra credit for sounding the oceanic depths of the female soul.

New York Times

This is a unique specimen: If worry is the staple emotion that most climate fiction evokes in its readers, Migrations — the novelistic equivalent of an energizing cold plunge — flutters off into more expansive territory.

Los Angeles Times

True and affecting, elegiac and imminent . . . the fractured timeline fills each chapter with suspense and surprises, parcelled out so tantalisingly that it took disciplined willpower to keep from skipping down each page to see what happens.

Washington Post

Migrations moves at a fast, exciting clip, motored as much by love for “creatures that aren’t human” as by outrage at their destruction.

Wall Street Journal

McConaghy creates a detailed portrait of a woman on the cusp of collapse, consumed with a world that is every bit as broken as she is. Migrations offers a grim window into a future that doesn’t feel very removed from our own. In understanding how nature can heal us, McConaghy underlines why it urgently needs to be protected.

Time

A nervy and well-crafted novel, one that lingers long after its voyage is over.

New York Times Book Review

An aching and poignant book, and one that’s pressing in its timeliness.

Guardian

A lyrical ode to our vanishing wilderness. When grappling with ecological collapse on a global scale, the stakes are literally epoch-ending, and in McConaghy’s hands, they are matched with the kind of heart-in-your-mouth high drama that pushes a reviewer to read long past lights out.

Sydney Morning Herald

An adventure of a wilder sort.

Vogue

In this tantalizingly beautiful epic, Franny’s life has been marked by secrets and loss, and so she turns to where she cannot reach: the skies.

Elle

At a time when it feels like we’re at the end of the world, this novel about a different kind of end of the world serves as both catharsis and escape.

Harper's Bazaar

Stunning . . . Migrations was written for the Earth’s wild creatures. Franny Stone is a compelling character . . . an Ishmael of sorts.

The Australian

McConaghy’s debut novel is dreamy, achingly sad, and a likely accurate prediction of what is to come. It is a story about being human in a world where more than just the ocean is treacherous.

SA Weekend

McConaghy’s debut novel is dreamy, achingly sad, and a likely accurate prediction of what is to come. It is a story about being human in a world where more than just the ocean is treacherous.

Literary Hub

Gorgeous . . . A personal reckoning that cuts right to the heart. This beautiful novel is an ode – if not an elegy – to an endangered planet and the people and places we love.

The Booktopian

Gripping, tender and beautifully done. This novel is as intimate as it is urgent – you emerge thrilled but dazed, but also galvanised to save the planet.

Anna Funder

A lovely, haunting novel about a troubled woman’s quest to follow the last surviving Arctic terns on their southerly migration. As she tries to make peace with the ghosts of her painful past, she must choose whether she herself wants – or deserves – to survive, in spite of everything she, and all humans, have destroyed and lost.

Ceridwen Dovey

This novel is enchanting, but not in some safe, fairytale sense. Charlotte McConaghy has harnessed the rough magic that sears our souls. I recommend Migrations with my whole heart.

Gerladine Brooks

An extraordinary novel . . . as beautiful and as wrenching as anything I’ve ever read.

Emily St John Mandel

Migrations is a wonder. I read it in a gasp. There is hope in these pages; a balm for these troubled times. McConaghy’s words cut through to the bone.

Lara Prescott

Migrations is deeply moving, haunting, and, yes, important.

Caroline Leavitt

Gutting and gorgeous, Migrations is an astounding meditation on love, trauma, and the cost of survival. With soulful prose and deep empathy, Charlotte McConaghy weaves parallel stories of a woman and a world on the brink of devastation, but never without hope.

Julia Fine

This keening lament of an adventure is compelling.

Guardian UK

Awards & recognition

Queensland Literary Awards

Shortlisted  •  2021  •  Fiction