The Sun Was Electric Light

‘I read this pure, pained, beautiful book in a single burst, and emerged from it with heart and nerves rinsed clean.’ Helen Garner

‘This novel sifted like sand between my fingers, and then it pulled me under and made me weep, for everyone I have ever loved. I followed Rachel Morton’s desire-line story wherever it took me, and I will always be where it ended up.’ Laura McPhee-Browne

‘A work of shining, spare clarity, that asks what it means to live a life of honest connection - to one’s self, to love, to this world.’ Peggy Frew

‘What a special book this is. Tender, poignant and filled with longing for those people and places we’ve lost - and perhaps never truly found in the first place. Rachel Morton’s novel leads us through the ache of grief, for self and others, towards acceptance.’ Dame Quentin Bryce

‘Ruminations on belonging and the sense of being an outsider reveal how an insatiable desire for something more from life can sometimes cause harm rather than good. In a meditative and hypnotic style, Morton has drawn in-depth characters with complex relationships. The judges were impressed with how contained the story was and how the plot, while centred mostly on emotional stakes, remained unpredictable, but believable.’ VPLA judges’ report

Rachel Morton is a writer living on Eastern Maar/Gunditjmara Country in south-west Victoria. Her poetry has appeared in Meanjin Quarterly, The Moth Magazine and various other publications. Rachel was shortlisted for the 2019 Australian Catholic University Prize for Poetry. The Sun Was Electric Light is her first novel and won the 2024 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript.