Illuminated Ruins
Hong Kong, 1956. On the heights of The Peak, the only way to survive the past is to bury it.
For Uri Weiss and his wife, Lujza, life in the British colony is a tailored mask. Hungarian Jewish doctors who escaped the wreckage of Europe only to endure Japanese occupation, they have rebuilt themselves through a fragile, assimilated restraint.
The arrival of the Mackays upends this peace. Hugh is a charismatic American with shadowy connections and Nancy is his effortlessly poised wife. As the families entwine, their daughters – Millie and Anne – form a bond so intense it threatens to consume them.
While the adults navigate the social rituals of the colony, the children retreat to the island’s illuminated ruins. Playing among bombed-out shells and wartime bunkers, they mirror a world of missions and cover stories. But when Anne reveals a truth Millie’s parents have kept unspoken for a decade, the foundations of their universe fracture.
As the Suez Crisis ignites, the children’s games lead them from the safety of The Peak into the Triad-controlled underworld of the Walled City. In a landscape of stolen identities, both families must finally confront the violence they can no longer outrun.
Miriam Sved is the author of the novels A Universe of Sufficient Size and Game Day. Her third novel, Illuminated Ruins, will be published by Ultimo Press in October 2026. Her novella ‘All the Things I Should’ve Given’ was a winner of Griffith Review’s Novella Project, and her short fiction has been widely published. She has also co-edited three feminist anthologies: #MeToo: Stories from the Australian movement, Mothers & Others: Australian writers on why not all women are mothers and not all mothers are the same and Just Between Us: Australian writers tell the truth about female friendship. Read more about Miriam.
Praise for A Universe of Sufficient Size
‘One of the most convincing and impressive novels about the life of the mind that I have ever seen written in Australia … This is a novel about youth and maths: about friendship, family, hopeless love, intellectual passions, and the long, long shadow of World War II.’
‘Love, friendship and sacrifice explode from the pages as two brilliant young women in war torn Hungary make decisions there can be no turning back from; that will have dire consequences for one, a life and family across two continents for the other.
Miriam has woven three generations and two periods of history into a page turning, emotional rollercoaster to remind us all that families are messy, complicated and how the repercussions of decisions made decades ago can come back and haunt you.
Miriam writes with authenticity and passion, where genius and true friendship pull together then strain and part. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.’
Heather Morris
‘A Universe of Sufficient Size is plotted with the precision of a complex Venn diagram, with overlapping identities, intersecting storylines, narrative arcs, and psychological circles that eventually resolve themselves into a poignant and breathtaking denouement.’
© Miriam Sved