The Sisters of Serendib: the Powerful, Beautifully Crafted New Novel for 2026 about Loss, Identity and Belonging, from the Award-Winning Author Of

Three sisters are separated as children. Decades later, with so much lost and changed, can they find their way back to each other? In 1990, a boat of asylum seekers leaves war-torn Sri Lanka, bound for Australia. When a mother dies on the journey, her three young daughters are separated and scattered across the country. Years later, the eldest, Janu, still remembers the home she left and the sisters she's lost. Having freed herself from the grip of a painful childhood, she builds a life for herself in a coastal town, running a small shop called Serendib, where the air hums with memory and people come to find what they didn't know they were searching for. In Melbourne, Samar, the middle sister, dances to speak the words she cannot say, pouring her longing and restlessness into movement, while in Sydney, Maryam, the youngest, finds magic in language, always searching for a place to belong. As Janu discovers clues to her sisters' identities and begins the quest to bring them together, they all face the question: can something broken for so long ever be made whole again? Beautiful and heartbreaking, this is the story of women who rise from loss to reclaim their stories, rebuild their lives, and step into the fierce beauty of their own becoming. A powerful new novel from the award-winning author of Untethered.