Infinite Splendours

Lawrence Loman is a bright, caring, curious boy with a gift for painting. He lives at home with his mother and younger brother, and the future is laid out before him, full of promise. But when he is ten, an experience of betrayal takes it all away, and Lawrence is left to deal with the devastating aftermath.

As he grows into a man, how will he make sense of what he has suffered? He cannot rewrite history, but must he be condemned to repeat it?

Lawrence finds meaning in the best way he knows. By surrendering himself to art and nature, he creates beauty - beauty made all the more astonishing and soulful for the deprivation that gives rise to it.

Infinite Splendours is an extraordinary novel, incandescent with love and compassion, rich in colour and character. The power and virtuosity of Laguna's writing make it impossible for us to look away; by being seen, Lawrence is redeemed.

And we, as readers, have had our minds and hearts opened in ways we can't forget.

Winner of the 2021 Colin Roderick Literary Award and the H.T Priestley Medal

Longlisted for the 2021 Miles Franklin Award
Longlisted for the 2021 Indie Award
Longlisted for the 2021 ABIA Award

Praise for Infinite Splendours

“Beautifully devastating is the best way to describe Laguna’s latest novel.”
– Leanne Edmistone, The Courier Mail

“Sofie is fearless in her storytelling”
– Juliet Rieden, Australian Women’s Weekly

“…Infinite Splendours deserves to sit beside David Malouf’s Harland’s Half Acre or Michelle De Krester’s The Lost Dog in that slender collection of brilliant Australian novels about art”
– Georgie Williamson, The Australian

“Laguna’s psychological acuity is displayed in full effect”
– Nicole Abadee, The Australian Book Review

“Written with compassion and tenderness, and Laguna’s characteristic aptitude for inhabiting the inner spaces of a vulnerable preadolescent, Infinite Splendours is suffused with outward radiance, which makes its excursions into darkness all the more horrifying to read.”
– Thuy On, The Guardian

Sofie Laguna’s achievement in her novel Infinite Splendours makes my hair stand on end. She is so deft at balancing the darkest material with luminosity that it seems impossible to tell you the core subject matter of the book and still have you believe that it is ultimately uplifting. Written here, it would be confronting, possibly off-putting, but in Laguna’s hands the human condition she excavates is wrapped in her extraordinary compassion. Suffice to say there is a terrible betrayal against a child, then a painstaking exposition of how that betrayal ripples along the long arc of a life. Brilliant. 
– Lucy Clark, The Guardian