A Sand Archive begins in Geelong, where our unnamed narrator discovers a slim volume on dune stabilisation by an engineer, FB Herschell. The unassuming book quickly transfixes the narrator with its blend of carefully observed statistics and poetic flourishes. When Herschell himself visits the narrator’s book store, they begin a brief friendship that inspires a search for the true Herschell following his death. Piecing together a life from diaries we are transported between the 1968 Paris student riots, the French Atlantic Coast and the stifling Victorian public service.
