Christos Tsiolkas

Tender and brutal and blazingly brilliant, the new novel from the acclaimed author of the international bestseller The Slap takes an unflinching look at modern Australia - at our hopes and dreams, our friendships and our families - and asks what it means to be a good person, and what it takes to become one.

Barracuda

At a suburban barbecue one afternoon, a man slaps an unruly boy. The boy is not his son. It is a single act of violence, but this one slap reverberates through the lives of everyone who witnesses it happen.

The Slap

Claire G. Coleman

Jen Wilde

Michael Earp Michael

Nevo Zisin

Marlee Jane Ward

Alison Evans

Benjamin Law

Jax Jacki Brown

Michael Earp

Omar Sakr

Erin Gough

Ellen van Neerven

Twelve of Australia's best writers from the LGBTQ+ community are brought together in this ground-breaking collection of YA short stories. What does it mean to be queer? What does it mean to be human? In this powerful #LoveOzYA collection, twelve of Australia's finest writers from the LGBTQ+ community explore the stories of family, friends, lovers and strangers - the connections that form us. This inclusive and intersectional #OwnVoices anthology for teen readers features work from writers of diverse genders, sexualities and identities, including writers who identify as First Nations, people of colour or disabled. With short stories by bestsellers, award winners and newcomers to young adult fiction including Jax Jacki Brown, Claire G Coleman, Michael Earp, Alison Evans, Erin Gough, Benjamin Law, Omar Sakr, Christos Tsiolkas, Ellen van Neerven, Marlee Jane Ward, Jen Wilde and Nevo Zisin.

12 Queer #LoveOzYA Stories

Kindred

Ari is nineteen, Greek, gay, unemployed, looking for something - anything - to take him away from his aimless existence in suburban Melbourne. Torn between the traditional Greek world of his parents and friends and the alluring, destructive world of clubs and drugs and anonymous sex, all Ari can do is ease his pain in the only way he knows how. Christos Tsiolkas' The Slap became an international bestseller and was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2009. This is his sensational first novel.

Loaded

'We are despised, yet we grow. We are tortured and crucified and yet we flourish. We are hated and still we multiply. Why is that? You must wonder, how is it we survive?' In a far corner of the Roman Empire, a radical sect is growing. Alone, unloved and battling his sexuality, Saul scrapes together a living exposing these nascent Christians, but on the road to Damascus, everything changes. Saul - now Paul - becomes drawn into this new religion and its mysterious leader, whose crucifixion leaves followers waiting in limbo for his promised return. As factions splinter and competition to create the definitive version of Christ's life grows violent, he begins to question his new faith and the man at its heart. Damascus is an unflinching dissection of doubt, faith, tyranny, revolution, cruelty and sacrifice. A vivid and visceral novel with perennial concerns, it is a masterpiece of imagination and transformation.

Damascus

WINNER - Best Fiction, Victorian Premier's Literary Awards 'They kill us, they crucify us, they throw us to beasts in the arena, they sew our lips together and watch us starve. They bugger children in front of their mothers and violate men in front of their wives. The temple priests flay us openly in the streets. We are hunted everywhere and we are hunted by everyone ... We are despised, yet we grow. We are tortured and crucified and yet we flourish. We are hated and still we multiply. Why is that? You have to wonder, how is it that we not only survive but we grow stronger?' Christos Tsiolkas' stunning new novel Damascus is a work of soaring ambition and achievement, of immense power and epic scope, taking as its subject nothing less than events surrounding the birth and establishment of the Christian church. Based around the gospels and letters of St Paul, and focusing on characters one and two generations on from the death of Christ, as well as Paul (Saul) himself, Damascus nevertheless explores the themes that have always obsessed Tsiolkas as a writer: class, religion, masculinity, patriarchy, colonisation, exile; the ways in which nations, societies, communities, families and individuals are united and divided - it's all here, the contemporary and urgent questions, perennial concerns made vivid and visceral. In Damascus, Tsiolkas has written a masterpiece of imagination and transformation: an historical novel of immense power and an unflinching dissection of doubt and faith, tyranny and revolution, and cruelty and sacrifice.

The In-Between

The stunningly powerful new novel from the author of The Slap.

An audacious and transformative novel about the past, the present and the power of writing and imagination from the award-winning author of Damascus and The Slap.

Seven and a Half

Love, sex, death, family, friendship, betrayal, tenderness, brutality, sacrifice and revelation . This incendiary collection of stories from acclaimed writer Christos Tsiolkas, bestselling author of The Slap and Barracuda, takes you deep into worlds both strange and familiar, and introduces you to characters who will never let you go and situations that will haunt you forever. '. one of the most significant contemporary storytellers at work today.' Colm Toibin, author of Brooklyn '. there is not a more important writer working in Australia today.' Australian Bookseller & Publisher '. one of our most important novelists.' Age 'Tsiolkas has become that rarest kind of writer in Australia, a serious literary writer who is also unputdownable, a mesmerising master of how to tell a story. He has this ability more than any other writer in the country .' Peter Craven, Sun-Herald 'One of the most astute chroniclers and critics of our age and culture, Tsiolkas is a passionate, poetic, political polemicist, but his critiques take the form of enthralling stories that are peopled with characters that bounce off the page.' Adelaide Advertiser 'Tsiolkas is a hard-edged, powerful writer . leaves us exhausted but gasping with admiration.' Washington Post 'The sheer energy of Tsiolkas' writing-its urgency and passion and sudden jags of tenderness-is often an end in itself: a thrilling, galvanising reminder of the capacity of fiction to speak to the world it inhabits.' James Bradley, Monthly

Merciless Gods

In hedendaags Melbourne geeft een man tijdens een barbecue een jongetje een klap, hetgeen onvoorziene gevolgen heeft voor alle betrokkenen.

The slap

From the international bestselling and Booker Prize nominated author of The Slap comes a blazingly brilliant new novel. Winner of the 2006 Age Fiction Prize Winner of the 2006 Melbourne Best Writing Award Part long-forgotten myth, part meditation on the violence and tragedy of contemporary Europe, Dead Europe is an unsettling story about blood lust and blood revenge; a novel of blazing brilliance from the acclaimed author of The Slap. Isaac, a young Australian photographer, is travelling through Europe. His whole life he has longed for the sophistication and wealth of the Europe of his father's stories, the Europe at the centre of civilization and culture. But behind the facade of a unified and globalized contemporary society, he finds a history-blasted wasteland, a place forever condemned by the ghosts of its unspeakable past. In the mountain village in the Balkans where his mother was born, he unearths ancient terrors that have not been laid to rest, and perhaps never can be.

Winner of the Age Fiction Prize 2006

Dead Europe

Barrakuda

En solig eftermiddag vid en grillfest i en förortsvilla ger en av gästerna en trotsig treåring en örfil. Barnet är inte hans son. Örfilen delar hela umgängeskretsen i två läger: de som tycker att den är ett grovt övergrepp och de som tycker att incidenten var en bagatell. När pojkens föräldrar bestämmer sig för att göra rättssak av det fördjupas konflikten. Vänskapen mellan gamla vänner sätts på prov och familjelojalitet ställs mot moral och principer. Boken nominerades till Bookerpriset 2010. Den har sålts i en miljon exemplar, översatts till 20 språk och även blivit en framgångsrik teveserie som sänds i SVT under 2012.

Örfilen

"The Jesus Man tells the story of three brothers, Dominic, Tommy and Louie, who come from a Greek-Italian family haunted by its history. When Tommy is made redundant from work and can't find another job, he finds the voices in his head becoming louder and louder as he sinks inexorably into pornography, violence and madness. Tommy snaps and murders someone who may or may not be a serial sex killer of children, and then castrates and kills himself, leaving his family numb with grief and incomprehension and at the mercy of the ensuing media feeding frenzy.The Jesus Man is told from the point of view of Louie, the youngest brother, who is struggling to make sense of Tommy's death and the kind of world in which such tragedies are commonplace."--Publisher's website.

The Jesus Man

Georgia Blain

Judy Nunn

Craig Silvey

Alex Miller

Rachael Treasure

Malla Nunn

Nick Earls

Mark Dapin

Includes stories by: Maggie Alderson, Georgia Blain, Mark Dapin, Nick Earls, Alex Miller, Judy Nunn, Malla Nunn, Craig Silvey, Rachael Treasure, Christos Tsiolkas.

Ten Short Stories You Must Read in 2010

Allen & Unwin shorts

Sticks, Stones

At a suburban barbecue, a man slaps a child who is not his own.This event has a shocking ricochet effect on a group of people, mostly friends, who are directly or indirectly influenced by the event. In this remarkable novel, Christos Tsiolkas turns his unflinching and all-seeing eye onto that which connects us all: the modern family and domestic life in the twenty-first century. The Slap is told from the points of view of eight people who were present at the barbecue. The slap and its consequences force them all to question their own families and the way they live, their expectations, beliefs and desires. What unfolds is a powerful, haunting novel about love, sex and marriage, parenting and children, and the fury and intensity - all the passions and conflicting beliefs - that family can arouse. In its clear-eyed and forensic dissection of the ever-growing middle class and its aspirations and fears, The Slap is also a poignant, provocative novel about the nature of loyalty and happiness, compromise and truth.

From the award-winning author of The Slap comes a powerfully moving story of forgiveness and a young man’s struggle towards maturity. His whole life, Danny Kelly has wanted just one thing: to win Olympic gold. Everything he’s ever done--every thought, every dream, every action--has taken him closer to that moment of glory, of vindication, when the world would see him for what he is: the fastest, the strongest and the best. His life has been a preparation for that moment. His parents struggle so that he can attend the most prestigious private school, with the finest swimming program. Danny loathes it there and is bullied and shunned as an outsider, but his coach is the best, and he knows Danny is too--better than all those rich boys, those pretenders. Danny’s win-at-all-costs ferocity gradually wins favour with the coolest boys--he’s Barracuda, he’s the psycho, he’s everything they want to be but don’t have the guts to become. He’s going to show them all. Should we teach our children to win, or should we teach them to live? How do we make and remake our lives? Can we atone for the past? Can we overcome shame? And what does it mean to be a good person? A searing and provocative novel by the acclaimed author of international bestseller The Slap, Barracuda is an unflinching look at modern society, at our hopes and dreams, our friendships and our families. It is about class and sport and politics and migration and education. It is about family and friendship and love and work, the identities we inhabit and discard, the means by which we fill the holes at our centre. Barracuda is brutal, tender and blazingly brilliant--everything we have come to expect from this fearless vivisector of our lives and our world.

The tender, sensual and moving new novel from the award-winning and bestselling author of The Slap and Damascus. A compelling contemporary love story between two middle-aged men, told with grace, heart and wisdom. No life is simple, and no life is without sorrow. No life is perfect. Two middle-aged men meet on an internet date. Each has been scarred by a previous relationship; each has his own compelling reasons for giving up on the idea of finding love. But still they both turn up for the dinner, feel the spark and the possibility of something more. Feel the fear of failing again, of being hurt and humiliated and further annihilated by love. How can they take the risk of falling in love again. How can they not? A tender, affecting novel of love, of hope, of forgiveness by one of our most fearless and truthful interpreters of the human heart, the acclaimed bestselling author of The Slap and Damascus. Praise for Christos Tsiolkas: 'I've admired the risk and power of all his novels, but this might be the riskiest of all—so personal, so delicate and true—and I love it.' — Charlotte Wood on 7 1/2 'A scorching, mythic work with a heart of the sweetest intimacy.'— Helen Garner on 7 1/2 'The audacity of Tsiolkas is still a thrill. And, dare one say it, necessary.' — Nigel Featherstone on 7 1/2 'Tsiolkas has proved himself a heroic writer, ready to enter the fray and wrestle with intractable moral and political questions. A powerful parable of our times.' — The Saturday Paper on Damascus 'Every time I was 10 pages in a new book, I thought, "It's not Damascus", and put it aside for another day . . .' — Stephen Romei, Weekend Australian on Damascus 'I finished Barracuda on a high: moved, elated, immersed . . . This is the work of a superb writer who has completely mastered his craft but lost nothing of his fiery spirit in so doing. It is a big achievement.' — The Guardian 'Once in a while a novel comes along that reminds me why I love to read: The Slap is such a book . . . Tsiolkas throws open the window on society, picks apart its flaws, embraces its contradictions and recognises its beauty, all the time asking the reader, Whose side are you on? Honestly, one of the three or four truly great novels of the new millennium.' — John Boyne, author of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas 'The Slap is nothing short of a tour de force, and it confirms Christos Tsiolkas's reputation as one of the most significant contemporary storytellers at work today . . . Here is a novel of immense power and scope.' — Colm Tóibín, author of Brooklyn

Christos Tsiolkas

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