Cold Enough for Snow

The inaugural winner of The Novel Prize

The inaugural winner of The Novel Prize, a new biennial award established by Giramondo, Fitzcarraldo Editions and New Directions. Cold Enough for Snow was unanimously chosen from over 1500 entries.

Jessica Au’s novel is published by Giramondo, as well as Fitzcarraldo Editions in the UK and New Directions in the US, and will be translated into eighteen languages around the world.

A young woman has arranged a holiday with her mother in Japan. They travel by train, visit galleries and churches chosen for their art and architecture, eat together in small cafés and restaurants and walk along the canals at night, on guard against the autumn rain and the prospect of snow. All the while, they talk, or seem to talk: about the weather, horoscopes, clothes and objects; about the mother’s family in Hong Kong, and the daughter’s own formative experiences. But uncertainties abound. How much is spoken between them, how much is thought but unspoken? Cold Enough for Snow is a reckoning and an elegy: with extraordinary skill, Au creates an enveloping atmosphere that expresses both the tenderness between mother and daughter, and the distance between them.

WINNER: Prime Minister’s Literary Award – Fiction 2023
WINNER: Victorian Premier’s Literary Award – Fiction 2023
WINNER: Victorian Prize for Literature 2023
WINNER: The Readings Prize – New Australian Fiction 2022
SHORTLISTED: Miles Franklin Literary Award 2023
SHORTLISTED: ABIA – Small Publishers’ Adult Book of the Year 2023
SHORTLISTED: The Age Book of the Year Award 2022
SHORTLISTED: NSW Premier’s Literary Awards – Fiction 2023
SHORTLISTED: Queensland Literary Awards – Fiction 2022
SHORTLISTED: BookPeople BookData – Adult Fiction Book of the Year 2023
LONGLISTED: Indie Book Awards – Fiction 2022
LONGLISTED: Dublin Literary Award 2023
LONGLISTED: ALS Gold Medal 2023

A crystalline technical feat…[and] an enquiry into the human heart…Au’s writing has a quietness, a sophistication of expression emerging from a hum of silence and thought. It signals a new direction in Australian literature, intricately structured and with a flow and reach that, like all remarkable writing, is without boundaries.
Judges’ comments, Prime Minister’s Literary Awards

Cold Enough for Snow opens up new horizons for Australian literature…Au’s prose is like a river, pulling the reader along as the story pools and eddies, flowing steady and deep. It may be a slender volume – but this book holds all the heft of a writer in full command of her craft.
Judges’ comments, Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards

The acuity and sensitivity with which Au registers the distances between her characters, their small failures of communication, their unspoken feelings of unease, is one of the novel’s triumphs…a sublimely atmospheric novel that considers the transformation that occurs when an experience is drawn into the realms of memory and art.
Judges’ comments, Miles Franklin Literary Award

So calm and clear and deep, I wished it would flow on forever.Helen Garner

Rarely have I been so moved, reading a book: I love the quiet beauty of Cold Enough for Snow and how, within its calm simplicity, Jessica Au camouflages incredible power.Édouard Louis

A beautifully observed book, written in precise, elegant prose that contains a wealth of deep feeling.
Kirkus Reviews

The soft, patient warmth of Au’s prose…sometimes feels attuned to truths just out of the narrator’s reach.
The New Yorker

Hypnotic…Once this probing and surprising text catches hold, it leaves the reader with lingering questions.
Publisher’s Weekly

One of the most sublime novels I’ve ever read…Its themes are familiar, but the way Jessica handles those themes made me rethink assumptions I had about the rules of fiction. A delicate and beautifully written novel, I’ll be going back to it even after the year ends, time and time again.
Camonghne Felix