'I felt always that the crumbling paper must hold something that was more like speaking flesh and blood that somewhere amid these shreds I would learn something of this family lost to silence; something about a house that was quickly abandoned and a family divided, and then all gates shut on the past.'

A young Australian man arrives in riot-ravaged Paris, armed with an old manuscript written in French and an obsessive desire to piece together the fragments of a mystery that has haunted him since childhood. His journey takes him back and forth in time, over the ruins of desert and city, and through the veils and mirages of history and memory.

From the blood-soaked streets of the 1870 siege of Paris, to the tear-gas and chaos of its student riots of 1968; from the desolate, windswept Australian desert to the appalling dank prisons of 19th Century New Caledonia, Deception tells an epic story of a search for truth, spanning continents and generations.

Michael Meehan is the acclaimed, award-winning author of The Salt of Broken Tears and Stormy Weather. Deception, his long-awaited third novel, is a triumph of storytelling, imagery and language, a powerful, haunting work from a writer with 'an imagination of another order' (The Australian).

'. complex, intellectually rich and often intriguing' - ABR

'. told in opulent prose, sentences and paragraphs that build to irresistible crescendos . lusciously complex.' - Canberra Times

'. quietly accomplished, intricately evoking a shifting cycle of disparate settings and times, while keeping its steady focus on the family mysteries at its core.' - Weekend Australian