
In Search of the Blue Tiger
Robert Power
9781921924163
Trade paperback 336pp
AU 29.95
All rights: Transit Lounge
In store: 1 March 2012
‘This is a marvellously surprising and rewarding work. By turns precociously clever and darkly disturbing, 11 year old Oscar Flower’s quest for the mythical blue tiger takes the reader on a transformative journey that challenges one’s expectations.’
Liam Davison, author of The White Woman and The Betrayal.
Eleven year old Oscar Flowers is on a quest to make sense of the strange world of adults that surrounds him in the seaside town of Tidetown. The bizarre behaviour of his parents and great aunt impels him to search for the blue tiger, a powerful and beautiful animal that will save his family from themselves. Mrs April, the town’s librarian, helps Oscar in his pursuit of knowledge and generously shares her great love of books with him. A deep and wondrous friendship develops. Yet as Oscar falls under the influence of his peers, the fishmonger’s peculiar twin daughters, Perch and Carp, he becomes embroiled in a dark crime of vengeance with seemingly disastrous consequences.
Hugely positive and an imaginative tour de force In Search of the Blue Tiger is at once a celebration of books and reading, an affecting love story between a widowed town librarian and a lonely troubled child and a gripping testament to the way that any of us can move beyond the mistakes of our past to a new beginning.
Shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards
Robert Power was born in Dublin and now lives in Melbourne, as an Australian citizen, with his wife and his youngest son. He freelanced as a journalist in London for a decade, appearing regularly in newsprint and magazines including The Guardian, New Society, New Statesman, Radio Times, Time Out, City Limits. An earlier version of In Search of the Blue Tiger was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards for an Unpublished Manuscript in 2008. He has just completed Swansong, a literary thriller, and is currently working on a sequel to The Blue Tiger.
Robert has worked in HIV prevention for many years, travelling to all continents as a consultant and publishing over 100 academic journal articles, appearing on TV and radio in Australia and abroad. He paints in oils and acrylics and has had five solo and four group exhibitions and numerous commissions.

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body.