The Northern Tomb
The Northern Tomb tells the story of Mr Zhao, an elderly widower, and Sister Fu, his middle-aged carer, being in isolation together in Shenyang, a capital city in Northeast China, during the Covid pandemic. Weighed down by loss and private sorrow, the unlikely housemates protect and care for each other in ingenious ways as they come to terms with their own painful pasts. Structured as a quartet, narrated in multiple voices with different perspectives, this novel explores the depth of grief, the possibility of redemption, while testifying to the transformative power of friendship during difficult times. It also contemplates aging, illness, and the meaning of caring for the body. With a small cast of characters the novel provides an intimate portrayal of parental love and sibling dynamics, and reveals family legends and myths as inheritance, patterns of fate running through generations, and individual’s struggles amid the tidal waves of history.
Isabelle Li is a Chinese Australian writer and translator based in Sydney. She has published in various anthologies and literary journals including The Best Australian Stories, Sleepers Almanac, New Australian Stories, Southerly, Westerly and UTS Writers’ Anthology. Her collection of short stories A Chinese Affair was published by Margaret River Press in 2016. Her prose translations have appeared in Sydney Review of Books and her poetry translations in Mascara, and World Literature and Works in China. Her Chinese translation of Sebastian Barry’s novel The Secret Scripture was published by Zhejiang Literature & Art Publishing House. Her script MOONCAKE AND CRAB was made into a short film, funded by Screen NSW and premiered at the 60th Melbourne International Film Festival. She is a fellow of Varuna and was the inaugural winner of the Mascara Bundanon Writer’s Residency. She received her Doctor of Creative Arts from Western Sydney University.
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