What the Boy Hears When the Girl Dreams

Twelve-year-old Finn Townsend wakes up one day with super-hearing. It gives him 'dancing eyes' and fainting spells, makes him the target of the school bully, and opens a window onto his parents' failing marriage. At night he hears the dream-talk of Buseje, an illegal asylum seeker from Malawi who lives downstairs in the granny flat. Finn begins to retrieve the fragmented stories which spill out while Buseje sleeps, helping her untangle the terrible mysteries of her childhood. But as Finn's superpowers grow, he unwittingly unleashes ghosts from the past and the secrets they carry. As the immigration officers close in on Buseje, can Finn do anything to prevent her from being deported? AUTHOR: Graeme Friedman is a clinical psychologist and an award-winning writer whose short stories have appeared in anthologies published internationally. His book The Fossil Artist (Jacana, 2010), a novel about crime, authenticity, what it means to be human and how we come to love, was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize (Best First Book). He is also the author of the critically acclaimed The Piano War (David Philip, 2003), an unbelievable yet true story of love and survival set against the horrors of World War II, and of Madiba's Boys, a non-fiction book on South African football, politics and history, published in South Africa (New Africa Books, 2001) and the United Kingdom (Comerford & Miller, 2001) with a foreword by Nelson Mandela. Madiba's Boys was a Top Ten Sports Book in the United Kingdom. He lives in Sydney with his wife and their three children, all of whom share a love of stories.