Robbie Arnott Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Robbie Arnott
Robbie Arnott was born in 1989 in Launceston. His writing has appeared in Kill Your Darlings, the Lifted Brow, Island, and “Seven Stories”, the 2017 anthology.

He has won the 2014 Scribe Nonfiction Prize for Young Writers and the 2015 Tasmanian Young Writers’ Fellowship. After “Flames” was released, he was named a Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Novelist, which is a title that is awarded to select Australian authors under the age of 35 at the time their work got published. It has been included as a text in Australian Victorian school curriculum.

In his youth, he was most influenced by Brian Jacques’ “Redwall” series of novels.

Robbie’s favorite author would have to be Annie Proulx, just because her writing means so much to him.

His favorite literary hero is Philip Marlowe. He is charismatic, compelling, and funny. Despite all of his bluntness and toughness, the guy is kind to people that need kindness.

His favorite novel is Tobias Wolff’s “Old School” and his favorite movie is “Jiro Dreams of Sushi (2011).

“Flames” is the first stand alone novel and was released in 2018. Levi McAllister (a young man) decides to build a coffin for Charlotte (his twenty-three year old sister), who promptly makes a run for it. Karl (a fisherman) hunts for tuna in partnership with this seal. A water rat swims upriver in search of the cloud god. And a dad takes form from fire.

The answers to each of these riddles are to be found in this story of love and grief as well as the bonds of family, tracing a journey across the southern island which takes us full circle.

“Flames” sings out with sadness and joy. Spellbinding in its descriptions of nature and its celebration of the power of language, utterly original in conception, it announces the arrival of this thrilling new voice in contemporary fiction.

Shortlisted for the Guardian’s Not the Booker Prize in 2019, longlisted for the Miles Franklin Award, and got nominated for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for fiction.

Readers found this to be a beautifully written and full of some wonderful stories.

“The Hall Chimp” is the first stand alone novella and was released in 2019. A short story sure to have you right on the edge of your seat, and screaming ‘wake up!’.

The dad and the mom are in their bed however the boy’s standing out in the hallway. He has been sleepwalking again.

The boy wakes in the middle of the night just to find there is a man in his hallway. However this is not some regular man. No. He is a hall chimp. The man jumps around like a chimp, scratched his own armpits like a chimp, and rolls around on the floor like some chimp. And the boy wants to play too.

“The Rain Heron” is the second stand alone novel and was released in 2020. A gripping story of environment, myth, adventure, and an unlikely friendship.

Ren lives all alone out on the remote frontier of a country that is devastated by this coup d’etat. She survives by trading, farming, hunting, and forgetting the contours of what used to be a normal life while living high on the forested slopes.

However her quiet stability gets disrupted once this army unit, that is led by this young female soldier arrives on the mountains with her government orders searching for this legendary creature known as the rain heron (a dangerous, mythical, and form-shifting bird with the ability to change the weather). Ren insists that this bird is just a story, but this soldier is not going to be deterred, forcing them both into a grueling quest.

Immersive and spellbinding, this novel is an astounding and mythical exploration of female friendship, human resilience, and man’s precarious relationship to nature. While Ren and the soldier continue to hunt for the heron, this bond forms between them, and the painful details of Ren’s old life emerge, this life punctuated by trauma, loss, and a second, just as dangerous and magical creature. Slowly but surely, the soldier and Ren’s lives entwine, unravel, and then ultimately erupt in this masterfully crafted ending where both of the women are forced to face their largest regrets and fears.

Robbie sews magic into reality with this confident and steady hand. Bubbling with rare ambition and imagination, this novel is an emotionally charged and dazzling read, one which asks timely yet eternal questions about nationality, friendship, environment, and the myths that bind us.

“The Rain Heron” was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award and won the AGE Book of the Year Award. Critics also noted that the novel continued Robbie’s style of daring and risk taking literary fiction, with a positive reception to its environmental messages.

“Limberlost” is the third stand alone novel and was released in 2022. Ned, during the heat of a long summer, hunts rabbits in a river valley, and hopes that the pelts are going to earn him enough money to buy him a small boat. His two brothers have gone away to fight a war, their whereabouts are unknown. His older sister and dad struggle to hold it together on Limberlost, the family’s orchard.

Desperate to ignore it all, to avoid the future that is rushing toward him, he dreams about open water. While his story unfolds over the following decades, we see just how his choices this summer come to shape the course of his entire life, the fate of his family and the valley’s future, with its seasons of rebirth and death.

“Limberlost” is an extraordinary chronicle of land and life; of love and blood ties; and carnage and kindness.

“Limberlost” won the Voss Literary Prize in 2023 and was Robbie’s second novel to win the AGE Book of the Year Award. It was also shortlisted for the 2023 Miles Franklin Literary Award.

Readers found this to be a lyrical and moving coming of age story. Robbie’s writing is beautiful, redolent of the beauty of the Tasmanian landscape and of the exquisiteness of its fauna and flora. It’s quite a powerful read.