Prelude to Christopher is a 1934 novella by Eleanor Dark

Eleanor Dark

Eleanor Dark was an Australian author whose novels included Prelude to Christopher and Return to Coolami , both winners of the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal for literature, and her best known work The Timeless Land .-Life and career:Eleanor Dark was born in Sydney...

 (1901 - 1985). Dark was awarded the ALS Gold Medal

ALS Gold Medal

The Australian Literature Society Gold Medal is awarded annually by the Association for the Study of Australian Literature for “an outstanding literary work in the preceding calendar year.” From 1928 to 1974 it was awarded by the Australian Literature Society, then from 1983 by the Association for...

 for Prelude to Christopher. The storyline is nonlinear and of interest to those interested in the establishment of modernism in the arts in Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

. The story centers around a Eugenicist experiment gone awry on a remote island. The repercussions of the incident play out in a young woman's decision whether to have a child. A recurring symbol in the book is a painting of the island with the doomed eugenicist's experiment.