Eye of the Needle by Christopher Raja

Eye of the Needle is a novel from Christopher Raja, an Indian-Australian writer who came to Melbourne as a boy and has long been based in the Northern Territory. It moves between two lives across more than a century.

In 1882 a young Afghan cameleer named Kadir lands at Port Augusta with six camels, hired to carry a scientific expedition into the centre of the continent. More than a hundred years later, Kris grows up in the suburbs of Melbourne, an Indian migrant like Raja himself, and after his father's mysterious death drifts to St Kilda looking for a bigger life, one that leads him through drugs, sex and love toward the story he is meant to write.

A literary novel about grief, desire and ambition, and about the cameleers who helped open up the Australian interior. Australian literary fiction for readers of Michelle de Kretser and Christos Tsiolkas.