Following the success of his novel The Slap, Greek Australian author Christos Tsiolkas is back with his latest contribution to the literary world in the form of his novel Barracuda.
One of the most eagerly anticipated novels of 2013, Barracuda provides a provocative view of modern Australia. It looks at our hopes and dreams, our friendships and families, delivered with Tsiolkas’ unwavering take on what it is to be living in Australia right now – class and sport and politics and migration and education. It contains everything a person is: 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 centres around the main character Danny Kelly, whose only mission in life is to win Olympic gold. Everything he’s ever done – every thought, every dream, every action – takes him closer to that moment of glory, of vindication, when the world will 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 to send him to 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 knows he is the best and Danny knows it too, better than all those rich boys, those pretenders.
Five years ago The Slap was the Australian Book Industry’s Book of the Year, going on to sell 1.2 million copies around the world and being adapted into a popular television mini-series.
Tsiolkas’ prior novels include Loaded, which was made into the feature film Head On; The Jesus Man; Dead Europe, which won the 2006 Age Fiction Prize and the 2006 Melbourne Best Writing Award, and The Slap, which was published in 2008 in Australia and has since been published all over the world. The Slap won the 2009 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, the 2009 Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction, the 2009 Australian Literary Society’s Gold Medal and the Australian Book Industry Awards Book of the Year for 2009. The Slap was also longlisted for the 2010 Man Booker Prize. Tsiolkas is also a playwright, essayist and screenwriter.