Writer Christos Tsiolkas is a contender for the Man Booker Prize for the The Slap a gritty realist account of suburban multicultural Australian .
Tsiolkas is one of two Australian novelists among 13 on the longlist for the most prestigious English-language book prize. Peter Carey, on the list with his historical novel Parrot and Olivier in America, has already won the prize twice for Oscar and Lucinda and True History of the Kelly Gang.
The Slap, which is the fourth novel of the Melbourne based Greek Australian author and playwright, examines tensions among friends after a man slaps another couple’s child at a barbecue in suburban Melbourne.
It won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize last year, was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award and has sold almost 150,000 copies in Australia.
Tsiolkas, 45, is now in Britain promoting the book. The Slap has sold 40,000 in the UK and is in front of every cash register. It has been a bestseller in Canada. British originally rejected The Slap until it won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize.
The Daily Telegraph in London said The Slap concentrated “on the very soul of multicultural Australia in the 21st century”.
The Man Booker shortlist will be announced on September 7 and the winner on October 12.