A scout retrieving artifacts from an ancient species on a distant planet sets out on a search for his missing mentor.
BIRD DEITY
by John Morrissey
Text Publishing Australia, August 2026
David is a scout. For ten years he has plundered the ruins of an alien civilisation about which he knows nothing. Now his contract is ending, and he’s ready to go home, a wealthy, successful man.
Except that everything seems to be slipping out of his control. His mentor Tom vanished on a recent expedition. David doesn’t know what has happened to him. And, as he waits for the ship that will take him away, he begins to question the choices he has made.
That’s when he is visited by a researcher, a specialist in non-human societies. She has travelled far to learn about this strange world and wants to hire David as her guide. One more expedition, one more trip to the rainswept wasteland of the plateau—and he can go home at last, rich beyond his dreams.
But he comes to realise that he may yet lose everything, as he is drawn inexorably towards an encounter with the terrifying soul of this world.
John Morrissey’s BIRD DEITY is a novel like no other. At once disconcerting and eerily familiar, it’s a cosmic horror story about power, theft, love, loss, and destiny.
‘Bird Deity is a spare and moving story about the burden of history and the vicissitudes of the colonial project. Morrissey’s novel has a dignified, undeniable power. It’s like Coetzee in space. I devoured it.’ –Dominic Amerena, author of I Want Everything
John Morrissey is a multi-award-winning Melbourne writer of Kalkadoon descent. His work has been published in Overland, Voiceworks, Meanjin and the anthology This All Come Back Now. He was the winner of the 2020 Boundless Mentorship, the runner-up for the 2018 Nakata Brophy Prize and named one of the Sydney Morning Herald’s Best Young Novelists of 2024. His debut short story collection, Firelight, was published in 2023 and won Best Collection in the Aurealis Awards 2023 as well as the Steele Rudd Award for a Short Story Collection in the 2024 Queensland Literary Awards.

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