The Slap: LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2010

Christos Tsiolkas

May 2010 · Atlantic Books Ltd

About this ebook

WINNER OF THE COMMONWEALTH WRITERS' PRIZE 2009
LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2010
'A tremendously vital book in every sense.' - Sunday Times
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 the slap reverberates through the lives of everyone who witnesses it happen.
Christos Tsiolkas presents the impact of this apparently minor domestic incident through the eyes of eight of those who witness it. The result is an unflinching interrogation of the life of the modern family, a deeply thought-provoking novel about boundaries and their limits...

Ratings and reviews

No need for the bad language, the drug taking, the infidelities, the sex, the name calling....in fact no need for most of it, could have been told in a few pages instead of wringing it out. Waste of time reading it. Noone was likeable and the child was a brat and deserved a slap but actually the slap was barely part of the so called 'story'. Why on earth listed for a Booker? Stupid.

Good story good description of characters but you would think it was the seventies and eighties with all the characters smoking

About the author

Christos Tsiolkas is the author of four novels: Loaded (filmed as Head-On) The Jesus Man and Dead Europe, which won the 2006 Age Fiction Prize and the 2006 Melbourne Best Writing Award. The Slap won the Commonwealth Writer's Prize 2009 and was shortlisted for the 2009 Miles Franklin Literary Award and the ALS Gold Medal. He is also a playwright, essayist and screen writer. He lives in Melbourne.