Lost and Found, the debut novel of 34-year-old Australian writer Brooke Davis, is a literary sensation.

It generated a lot of buzz at this year's London Book Fair and sparked a bidding war overseas.

A week before its launch in Australia it has been sold into 25 countries and will be translated into 20 languages for its overseas release next year.

For an unpublished debut novel by an Australian writer to be sold around the world is not unprecedented - think Hannah Kent's Burial Rites or Graeme Simsion's The Rosie Project - but it is highly unusual.

In her first media interview, Brooke Davis told Australian Story she was inspired to write the novel following her mother's sudden death seven years ago.

"The question I was trying to answer as I was writing this novel was: 'How do you live knowing that anyone you love can die at any moment?'" Davis said.

"The whole novel I think became a process of me trying to work through that."

Davis's mother, Jenny, died after becoming pinned between her car door and a gate in a freak accident.

She was an aged-care worker visiting a client. It is thought she leaned out of the car to pick up a newspaper and accidentally pressed the accelerator.

Davis was in Vietnam at the start of a year-long round-the-world trip when she got the news. She returned home immediately.

Life changes after grief: Davis

"I definitely see my life in the 'before Mum died' and 'after Mum died' kind of turning point," Davis said.

"And I began to try to understand the concept of grief.

Sorry, this video has expired The preview trailer for Lost and Found introduces the book's main characters.

"There's this idea that grief has a beginning and an end and with it comes all these buzzwords and concepts about stages of grief, like anger and denial and acceptance and closure.

"That way of announcing how grief should be makes everyone feels like they're doing it wrong. And there's no wrong way – it's all right."

Lost and Found is told from the perspective of three characters: a seven-year-old girl, an 82-year-old woman and an 87-year-old man, who have all lost someone.

"It made a lot of sense that the first voice that came to me was that of a little girl," Davis said. "Because I think we do feel pretty childlike in our grief."

The novel is whimsically humorous but has profound philosophical underpinnings.

Davis wrote it as part of a PhD at Perth's Curtin University.

Her ideas coalesced during the long train trip to Perth.

"A lot of the plot in my novel is based around that trip across the Nullarbor," Davis said.

"I was really struck by the landscape that was whooshing past me.

"There's an ugliness to it, a barrenness to it. But the longer you look at it, the more beautiful and unique it gets.

"I felt a real parallel to my own situation – the ugliness of grief and the darkness of that. But how if I was to let that sadness in, I was able to actually see beauty again and appreciate being alive more than I ever had."

Davis has suffered from stress-related illness in the past but feels that coming to terms with the death of her mother and keeping her memory close has made her a calmer person.

"I know now that the worst thing that can happen to me has happened and that I'm OK," she said.

"It makes most things seem kind of like white noise. I can boil things down to whether or not they're important to worry about or not."

Davis continues to live in Perth and works part-time in a bookshop.

She hopes the success of Lost and Found will allow her to write full-time.

Watch the full report on Australian Story tonight at 8:00pm on ABC1.