THE SUBMERGED CATHEDRAL

'Set me as a seal on your heart, for love is stronger than death.'

Spanning many years, travelling across Australia's vast continent and through some of Europe's great cities, The Submerged Cathedral is a beguiling, heartbreaking story of paradise and the fall; of faith, sacrifice and atonement; and of sisterly love and rivalry. Most of all, however, it is about an enduring and sacred love - a love stronger than death - and the journeys undertaken in its name.

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PRIZE LISTINGS 

• 2005 Miles Franklin Prize, shortlist
• 2005 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, South East Asia/South Pacific, shortlist
  

REVIEWS

'A tender, intelligent and beautiful novel ... Wood's writing is made of the same stuff as Debussy's music: exquisite and sometimes dissonant chords; delicate, slow notes; a gentle, passionate witness of the patterns submerged within the real order of things; of longing and elegy. And of love.'- The Bulletin

'A sustained tribute to romantic passion; the kind of enduring love that survives all manifestations of malevolent fate … this is a book about the cultivation and worship of a relationship, written in such limpid and beautiful prose that Charlotte Wood herself should be celebrated.’
- The Sunday Age

'Assured, bold and elegant, it should cement Wood's fine reputation …The Submerged Cathedral will be celebrated for its capacity to make us weep in a way only the best writing can. It seems little accident that the book takes its title from a song, for the almost exquisite pain that Wood captures usually belongs to the realm of music.'
- The Sydney Morning Herald

‘A love story shot through with religious overtones... that is as engrossing as it is moving … elliptical, clean and entirely convincing.’
- Jason Steger, The Age

'Fine writing and a powerful story about love and sacrifice.'
- Marie Claire

‘A finely wrought novel … convincing, and profoundly moving.’
- Miles Franklin Award judges