Text acquires Lohrey’s novel ‘Capture’

Capture follows psychiatrist James Mather beginning a research project about people who claim to have been abducted by aliens. ‘Transcript-like interviews, with experiencers who claim to have been captured, are interwoven with a series of conversations between Mather and his young research assistant,’ said the publisher.

Lohrey (The Conversion) is the recipient of the 2012 Patrick White Award, and her eighth novel, The Labyrinth (Text, 2021), won the Miles Franklin Literary Award, a Prime Minister’s Literary Award, a Tasmanian Literary Award and the Voss Literary Prize.

Lohrey said: ‘I wanted to explore the notion of what we can truly – and with certainty – know about the world. In a sense, Capture is a narrative about radical doubt, one that uses unorthodox means to explore that idea.’

Acquiring publisher Michael Heyward said: ‘Capture will cut a path through the minds of its readers. It will intrigue, baffle and beguile them. This is a definitional kind of book: odd, unexpected, but somehow undeniable and sane in a world that seems increasingly deranged.’

Text plans to release Capture in the first half of 2026.

Category: Local news Rights and acquisitions