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Tasmanian Literary Awards

Fortune by Lenny Bartulin (Allen & Unwin)

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Fortune

In 1806 Napoleon Bonaparte conquered Prussia. Beginning on the very day he leads his triumphant Grande Armee into Berlin through the Brandenburg Gate, Fortune traces the fates of a handful of souls whose lives briefly touch on that momentous day and then diverge across the globe. Spanning more than a century, the novel moves from the Napoleonic Wars to South America, and from the early penal settlement of Van Diemen's Land to the cannons of the First World War, mapping the reverberations of history on ordinary people. Some lives are willed into action and others are merely endured, but all are subject to the unpredictable whims of chance. Fortune is a historical novel like no other, a perfect jewel of epic and intense brilliance.

About the author

Lenny Bartulin's previous novel, Infamy, was longlisted in the 2015 Tasmanian Premier's Literary Awards, for the Tasmania Book Prize and the Margaret Scott Prize. In 2010, the second novel in his Sydney Noir Trilogy, The Black Russian, was shortlisted in the Ned Kelly Awards for Best Novel. He has published poetry and short stories in various journals, including Heat, Meanjin and Island Magazine. He has lived in Sydney and the Blue Mountains, and currently resides in Hobart with his wife and son.