'Recently Christopher Koch, one of Australia’s great novelists, died aged eighty-one. Author of eight novels, he won the Miles Franklin Award twice, for The Doubleman (1985) and Highways to a War (1995). His last novel, Lost Voices, was published in 2012. Tasmania, the place of his birth – and of his death – was an enduring presence in his novels, just as his novels will be an enduring presence in the literature of Tasmania and, indeed, of Australia. Here, Penny Cohen appraises this Tasmanian presence in Koch’s work.' (Publication abstract)