“Gill Schierhout imposes an austere intelligence and sense of regret on this remarkable narrative...…. a beautiful book. As bleak as love, and as heart-breaking...”
“written with an elliptical elegance reminiscent of Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient...a strong debut about the grip of memory and the power of one life to impose itself upon another”
“A haunting literary engagement”
“An unsentimental but moving account of mortal illness and love”
Gill Schierhout is a Zimbabwean-born, Southern African writer. Her work has been short-listed for the Caine Prize for African writing, the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize Best First Book (Africa region), and HSBC/South African PEN literary awards, and longlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin literary award and Sunday Times fiction prize. The Shape of Him was named in the top 25 works of fiction in year of publication by the Chief Literary Editor of the Irish Times, reviewed in Independent UK, Irish Times, Financial Times, Sydney Morning Herald and Sunday Times. A global health researcher as well as a fiction writer, Gill is now living in Sydney, Australia with her two young adult children. She is working on a second novel and a collection of short stories.