The Slap

Publisher Marketing: 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. ""The Slap" is a disturbing book but it is also funny and endearing, presenting the diversity of the Australian experience with a big, warm heart in the middle." "The Independent Weekly" "Tsiolkas has written an absolute ripper." "The Age" WARNING: Features strong language." Review Citations: Publishers Weekly 02/01/2010 pg. 31 (EAN 9780143117148, Paperback) Booklist 03/15/2010 pg. 24 (EAN 9780143117148, Paperback) Library Journal 04/15/2010 pg. 77 (EAN 9780143117148, Paperback) Wilson Fiction Catalog 01/01/2011 pg. 90 (EAN 9780143117148, Paperback) Contributor Bio:  Tsiolkas, Christos CHRISTOS TSIOLKAS is the author of four previous novels: Loaded, which was made into the feature film Head On; The Jesus Man; Dead Europe, which won the Age Fiction Award and the Melbourne Prize for Literature Best Writing Award; and The Slap, which won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book (South East Asia and South Pacific), the Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction, the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal, and the Australian Book Industry Awards Book of the Year. The Slap was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Tsiolkas is also a playwright, essayist and screenwriter. He lives in Melbourne, Australia.