'The unnamed narrator of Madeleine Watts’ debut novel The Inland Sea (2020) is a recent literature graduate and aspiring writer. Living off the dwindling remains of her student allowance, she plans to get a job, start saving for an airplane ticket overseas. But first she heads to Glebe to buy the first of the novels she will read on the rocks at Gordons Bay over the ‘last hot summer’ of her final months adrift in Sydney.' (Introduction)