The Sound of One Hand Clapping

Richard Flanagan

May 2014 · Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

About this ebook

A sweeping novel of world war, migration, and the search for new beginnings in a new land, The Sound of One Hand Clapping was both critically acclaimed and a bestseller in Australia. Recognized with the Australian Booksellers’ Book of the Year Award and the Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction, it now introduces to an international readership a young Australian who is emerging as one of our most talented new storytellers.

In the winter of 1954, in a construction camp for a hydroelectric dam in the remote Tasmanian highlands, when Sonja Buloh was three years old and her migrant Slovenian father was drunk, her mother Maria walked off into a blizzard, never to return. Thirty-five years later, Sonja returns to Tasmania and a father haunted by memories of the European war and other, more recent horrors. As the shadows of the past begin to intrude ever more forcefully into the present, Sonja’s empty life and her father’s living death are to change forever. The Sound of One Hand Clapping is about the barbarism of an old world left behind, about the harshness of a new country, and the destiny of those in a land beyond hope who seek to redeem themselves through love.

Ratings and reviews

Flanagan's visuals are amazing but be prepared for a dark and at times, overwrought journey. Flanagan's use of non-linear time jumps serves the story well. The setting and characters were unique.

About the author

Richard Flanagan was born in Longford, Tasmania, in 1961. He received a Master of Letters degree from Oxford University. His first novel, Death of a River Guide, won Australia's National Fiction Award. His works include The Sound of One Hand Clapping, The Unknown Terrorist, and four history books. He has received numerous awards including the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Gould's Book of Fish, the 2011 Tasmania Book Prize for Wanting, and the 2014 Man Booker Prize for The Narrow Road to the Deep North. He directed a feature film version of The Sound of One Hand Clapping. He was also shortlisted for the UK Indie Booksellers Award with The Narrow Road to the Deep North. This same title was won the Margaret Scott Prize for best book by a Tasmanian writer 2015. In 2018, The Narrow Road to the Deep North will be made into an international television series. The University of Melbourne has appointed him as the Boisbouvier Founding Chair in Australian Literature at the University of Melbourne, a new professorship to 'advance the teaching, understanding and public appreciation of Australian literature'.