A Single Witness

Christine Balint is the author of three novels. Most recently, Water Music won the 2021Viva la Novella Prize. Her first novel, The Salt Letters, was shortlisted for The Australian/ Vogel Literary Award, and was followed by Ophelia’s Fan. Her work has been publishedto critical acclaim in Australia, the United States, Germany and Italy, and she was namedone of Barnes & Noble’s Great New Writers in 2001. Christine holds a Bachelor of Arts(Honours) in English and Modern European Studies and has undertaken internationalarchival research in French, Italian and Hungarian. She has a PhD in Creative Arts fromthe University of Melbourne and has taught at the University of Melbourne and RMIT,and currently at La Trobe University. She is the daughter of Hungarian/Transylvanianrefugees and lives on Bunurong Land (the Mornington Peninsula) with her partner andtwo children.

'The evocative story of a vulnerable girl who refused to be silenced. Intimate, compelling, and atmospheric.'— Carrie Tiffany, Stella-Prize winning author of Mateship with Birds'A Single Witness is a beautifully crafted yet unflinching probe into an actual crime and its devastating aftermath in 1750s rural Italy. Told deftly and evocatively by a novelist of great skill, it is a deeply satisfying work of literary art, full of intense, almost hallucinatory detail as it goes straight to the heart of a village’s passions and deceits, and the indomitable spirit of the young woman whose life is turned upside down/torn apart.'— Garry Disher, bestselling author and three-time Ned Kelly Award winner