Pink Mountain on Locust Island
Pink Mountain on Locust Island is a 2018 novel by Jamie Marina Lau. The novel follows a 15-year-old girl named Monk living in Chinatown of an unnamed city with her father. Monk meets a 19-year-old art student named Santa Coy and is drawn into his world of art, crime and drugs. The novel was shortlisted for several awards, including the 2019 Stella Prize and ALS Gold Medal.
Publication history
Pink Mountain on Locust Island was first published by Brow Books, the publishing arm of The Lifted Brow, in 2018. After Brow Books entered hiatus in 2020, the novel was picked up by Hachette Australia, which published the novel on 28 April 2021. The novel was published in the United States by Coffee House Press on 8 September 2020.Reception
Pink Mountain on Locust Island received generally positive reviews. In a review in The Australian, Thuy On wrote that the novel was "patchy", praising its experimental prose and structure but noting that parts of the novel lacked substance. A review in Kirkus Reviews concurred, describing the novel as "hypnotizing and inscrutable" while noting that the prose was occasionally so dense that its meaning became obscured. A review in Publishers Weekly praised the novel's "fragmented noir aesthetic" and described the work as a perceptive debut.Awards
| Year | Award | Category | Result | |
| 2019 | Stella Prize | |||
| 2019 | New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards | UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing | ||
| 2019 | ALS Gold Medal | |||
| 2018 | Readings Prize | New Australian Fiction Prize |