'They kill us, they crucify us, they throw us to beasts in the arena, they sew our lips together and watch us starve. They bugger children in front of fathers and violate men before the eyes of their wives. The temple priests flay us openly in the streets and the Judeans stone us. We are hunted everywhere and we are hunted by everyone. We are despised, yet we grow. We are tortured and crucified and yet we flourish. We are hated and still we multiply. Why is that? You must wonder, how is it we survive?
'Christos Tsiolkas' stunning new novel Damascus is a work of soaring ambition and achievement, of immense power and epic scope, taking as its subject nothing less than events surrounding the birth and establishment of the Christian church. Based around the gospels and letters of St Paul, and focusing on characters one and two generations on from the death of Christ, as well as Paul (Saul) himself, Damascus nevertheless explores the themes that have always obsessed Tsiolkas as a writer: class, religion, masculinity, patriarchy, colonisation, refugees; the ways in which nations, societies, communities, families and individuals are united and divided—it's all here, the contemporary and urgent questions, perennial concerns made vivid and visceral.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
'This article takes up a specific feature of Christos Tsiolkas's writing, his style. Focusing on Tsiolkas's fourth novel, The Slap, this article argues that Tsiolkas’s style is an inarticulate style: a style that does not always use the right word at the right moment, that employs language for narrative utility rather than its own sake, and that sporadically departs from standard usage and correctness in ways that do not appear artistically motivated. My argument is that The Slap is notable among contemporary fiction in that what I consider to be Tsiolkas’s worst sentences are the most revealing of his inclinations as a novelist. Consequently, I depart from what has become a standard formula in Tsiolkas's reception, that where Tsiolkas succeeds as a writer he succeeds in spite of his style. Finally, this article also contributes to recent debates about the purpose and vocabulary of Australian literary discussion: how critics debate the work of a prize-winning author, how criticism and praise operate in critical judgements, and the significance of style in evaluations of literature.' (Publication abstract)
'This novel explodes into life with one of the most arresting openings since Ian McEwan’s Enduring Love. A girl is stoned to death. In many respects it is unlike McEwan’s description of a man falling to his death: the shock is not wrung out in the same slow motion; it is not, primarily, a narrative about the slippery nature of knowledge, ambiguity, responsibility. Instead it is a stark and unambiguous depiction of human brutality towards the despised, the utter failure of empathy. But the same generative power is there. The image sets a course, and a tone, for the rest of the book.' (Introduction)
'Christos Tsiolkas’s new novel, an unflinching take on Christianity, is the work for which he will be best remembered, writes Geordie Williamson'
'The man traditionally held to have written about half of the New Testament is variously known as Saul of Tarsus, Paul the Apostle, and St Paul. Initially an enthusiastic persecutor of the earliest Christians, he underwent a dramatic conversion shortly after the Crucifixion, and it is on this moment that his life, and Christos Tsiolkas’s new novel, both turn. Damascus covers the period 35–87 CE, from shortly before Paul’s conversion until twenty or more years after his death. This chronology is not straightforwardly linear, with an assortment of narrators recounting their personal experiences, at various times and from various points of view, of Christianity’s birth and spread amid the brutal realities of the Roman Empire.' (Introduction)
'For the longest time, the Australia I knew was all myth. Early reading didn’t dispel this languid stereotype because part of that upbringing was made possible only by the claustrophobia of the culture itself. It was a narrow existence, filled with outback hardship or romance novels, bush memoirs (how embarrassing that I appear to have done the same thing) and writers from America or worse, England. In short, the authors I knew were not a representative sample of this country. This is not a problem if your range is bigger and broader, but to the extent that my range left my cultural Umwelt at all, it stopped at Not Without My Daughter. Life, then, is about pushing back the borders of our observable universe. Especially when such a quest reveals much about the place we call home.' (Introduction)
'In an interview that followed the publication of his 2013 novel Barracuda, Christos Tsiolkas declared that he ‘learnt to feel Australian by travelling to Europe’.¹ It’s a sentiment perhaps best expressed in Dead Europe (2005), a novel in which to be Australian is repeatedly compared to naivety or childishness. Such expressions suggest that for Tsiolkas, we can only understand Australian national identity in relief, an idea hearkening back to the earliest definitions of the nation made by its colonisers and continuing throughout Australia’s migrant and multicultural history.' (Introduction)
'Thomas, Timothy and the ‘miserably homosexual’ Paul are rendered real in Tsiolkas’s new book. But it’s more than just an epic of sex in the ancient world.' (Introduction)
Christos Tsiolkas on 'Damascus'
Astrid Edwards
(interviewer),
2019
18443040
2019
single work
interview
podcast
'Christos Tsiolkas is one of Australia's most courageous writers. He has published six novels, several of which have been adapted for the screen. Damascus (2019) is his latest work.
'Christos is best known for Loaded (1995), which became the movie Head On, and The Slap (2008) was turned into an Australian and U.S. television miniseries after it won the 2009 Commonwealth Writers' Prize, was shortlisted for the 2009 Miles Franklin Literary Award and was longlisted for the 2010 Man Booker Prize.
'Christos is also a playwright, essayist, screen writer and film critic. His other works include Dead Europe (2005), which won the Age Fiction Prize and the Melbourne Best Writing Award, and The Jesus Man (1999). His critical literary study On Patrick White came out in 2018.'
Source: The Garret.
'Whether you're poolside balancing a book with an icy beverage, stealing moments between waves at the beach or catching up on the couch after Christmas, this list of favourites from ABC RN's book experts has got you covered.' (Introduction)
'Christos Tsiolkas won the fiction category prize of the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards for 2020 on Thursday for his critically acclaimed historical novel Damascus which is set in the early years of Christianity and centres around the conversion of St Paul.'
(Introduction)
