Christine Balint
📷 by Elizabeth Clancy
Christine Balint is the author of four novels. In 2021, Water Music won the Viva la Novella Prize. Her first novel, The Salt Letters, was shortlisted for The Australian / Vogel Literary Award, and was followed by Ophelia’s Fan. Her work has been published to critical acclaim in Australia, the United States, Germany and Italy, and she was named one of Barnes & Noble’s Great New Writers in 2001. Christine holds a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in English and Modern European Studies and has undertaken international archival research in French, Italian and Hungarian. She has a PhD in Creative Arts from the University of Melbourne and has taught at the University of Melbourne and RMIT, and currently at La Trobe University. She is the daughter of Hungarian/Transylvanian refugees and lives on Bunurong Land (the Mornington Peninsula) with her partner and two children.
Ebooks
Christine Balint
It is 1756. In the mountain village of Piovene, outside Venice, 13-year-old Anna Maria Bonon lives a spartan life with her grandmother and father. In the daytime, she cards wool at the local mill. At home, she raises silkworms. She is afraid of her violent father, Giacomo, who scrambles for work and drinks his sorrows away at the osteria. When Giacomo is arrested for a public brawl, Anna Maria and her grandmother walk miles to the court in Vicenza.
But instead of trying to free him, Anna Maria accuses her father of unspeakable crimes that he committed against her. The Council of Ten from Venice arrive to investigate. She is the single witness.
Challenged by her grandmother and the local priest to say she lied, Anna Maria is torn between loyalty to her elders and telling the truth.
Set against the evocative background of the fecund Veneto region, A Single Witness provides an insight into 18th century village life in Italy where being a young girl with an abusive father is a tough reality that would have crushed many others.
Drawing closely on original trial documents from Venetian archives, prize-winning novelist Christine Balint brings to light the true story of Anna Maria Bonon and her brave pursuit of justice at a time when a man’s authority over his family was unquestioned.
MAY 2026 | ISBN 9781922964342 | Paperback | 152 mm x 228mm | 320 pages