From the author of the Miles Franklin Award shortlisted Storyland, comes a rich, layered and thrilling novel of love, war and friendship, To Sing of War.

Longlisted 2024 ARA Historical Novel Prize


'Transcends the boundaries of historical fiction' Books+Publishing

DECEMBER 1944 In New Guinea, a young Australian nurse, Lotte Wyld, chances upon her first love, Virgil Nicholson, a soldier in the Allies' hard-fought jungle campaign. At Los Alamos in the United States, idealistic physicists Miriam Carver and Fred Johnson join Robert Oppenheimer and a team of brilliant scientists in a collective dream to build a weapon that will stop all war, while Kitty Oppenheimer wrestles with restrictions on her freedom. And on the sacred island of Miyajima in Japan, Hiroko Narushima is doing her best to protect her family.

Each of these people yearns to belong, yet each fiercely protects their independence. Secrets, misunderstandings and fears burden them; shame shapes them; hope and imagination lift them up. They are caught in a moment of history, both enthralled and appalled by actions they must undertake.

A beautiful, rich and intricately woven novel, To Sing of War asks how one person can make a difference in a world that is wondrous, thrilling and endangered. It insists on our interconnectedness, hums with the energy of the world and is a blazingly powerful and deeply moving account of friendship, love and war.

'Deeply intelligent and very affecting' The Saturday Paper

'In an exquisite, braided narrative, To Sing of War reanimates World War II in a paean to the environment.' Australian Book Review

'To Sing of War is one of the best things I've read this year, sweeping and yet intimate, ambitious, lyrical, propelled by memorable characters you don't want to let go of ... a fluid sense of time, a strong evocation of place and events. It's a novel of big themes, boldly told.' Caroline Baum

'An intricately woven novel, straddling war, love and friendship.' Sydney Morning Herald

'This is a book I didn't want to end. Its story, characters, settings and portrayal of war's insidious barbarity are utterly compelling.' Good Reading Bookclub

'I read very quickly, was totally immersed in it, and then I noticed there were moments of birdsong, of nature, and of music and war; this idea of singing war, which goes back both to Virgil and also to something else, she references Brecht at the beginning, but there is something that she is doing there that I found terribly moving.' Kate Evans, ABC Radio, The Bookshelf

'Catherine McKinnon's last novel, the Miles Franklin-shortlisted Storyland, is one of the more striking Australian novels of recent years ... Her new novel, To Sing of War, is no less ambitious. Interweaving the stories of half a dozen characters spread across the planet, it traces them to their convergence in the moment when the bomb fell on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, wiping out tens of thousands of lives in a matter of seconds ... The real power of this deeply intelligent and very affecting novel flows from its awareness of what war does to those caught up in it.' James Bradley, The Saturday Paper

'War writing can sometimes be formulaic and cliched, but McKinnon seeks a grittier view of war's complexities. To Sing of War recognises the prevalence of sexual violence in wartime - something which is often overlooked in commemorations.' Brigid Magner, The Conversation