Cirrus@Austlit

'The tender, sensual and moving new novel from the award-winning and bestselling author of The Slap and Damascus. A compelling contemporary love story between two middle-aged men, told with grace, heart and wisdom.

'No life is simple, and no life is without sorrow. No life is perfect.

'Two middle-aged men meet on an internet date. Each has been scarred by a previous relationship; each has his own compelling reasons for giving up on the idea of finding love.

'But still they both turn up for the dinner, feel the spark and the possibility of something more.

'Feel the fear of failing again, of being hurt and humiliated and further annihilated by love.

'How can they take the risk of falling in love again. How can they not?

'A tender, affecting novel of love, of hope, of forgiveness by one of our most fearless and truthful interpreters of the human heart, the acclaimed bestselling author of The Slap and Damascus.'(Publication summary)

'Fusing inquest transcripts, press clippings, private correspondence, real and imagined monologues spanning five decades of anti-gay violence, and 30 years of research by local historian Tim Reeves, this joint commission between Adelaide Festival, Feast Festival and State Opera South Australia demands the embrace of all thinking audiences, but is of special importance to this city.'

Source: State Opera South Australia.

'An audacious and transformative novel about the past, the present and the power of writing and imagination from the award-winning author of Damascus and The Slap.

'Art is not only about rage and justice and politics. It is also about pleasure and joy; it is also about beauty…
In a time of rage and confusion, I wanted to write about beauty.
-Christos Tsiolkas

'A man arrives at a house on the coast to write a book. Separated from his lover and family and friends, he finds the solitude he craves in the pyrotechnic beauty of nature, just as the world he has shut out is experiencing a cataclysmic shift. The preoccupations that have galvanised him and his work fall away, and he becomes lost in memory and beauty …

'He also begins to tell us a story …

'A retired porn star is made an offer he can't refuse for the sake of his family and future. So he returns to the world he fled years before, all too aware of the danger of opening the door to past temptations and long-buried desires. Can he resist the oblivion and bliss they promise?

'A breathtakingly audacious novel by the acclaimed author of The Slap and Damascus about finding joy and beauty in a raging and punitive world, about the refractions of memory and time and, most subversive of all, about the mystery of art and its creation.' (Publication summary)