'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.' (Publisher's blurb)
The Slap
Tony Ayres
,
Australia
:
ABC Television
Matchbox Pictures
,
2011
Z1699408
2011
series - publisher
film/TV
'The series starts at an Australian backyard BBQ. Amongst alcohol, friendship and a children's cricket game a man slaps a child who is not his son. The party comes to a sudden halt. The child's parents are so affronted they vow to take the man to court. As the series unfolds the police become involved and friends and family are forced to take sides. One cousin is forced to testify against another. Couples are caught in the crossfire. Beliefs are tested and relationships strained.
The Slap
( dir. Lisa Cholodenko
)
United States of America (USA)
:
Matchbox Pictures
Universal Television
NBC
,
2015
8280562
2015
series - publisher
film/TV
'Meet Hector [...], a public servant, husband, father and valued friend on the cusp of his 40th birthday. Meet Aisha [...], Hector's beautiful and intelligent wife who is planning his party filled with friends and his very boisterous Greek family. Sounds like the makings of a great day, right? Wrong.
'As Hector tries to navigate family politics, awkward friendships and the young woman he is dangerously captivated by, the built-up tension explodes when Hector's hotheaded cousin slaps another couple's misbehaving child. Everyone is understandably stunned, and the party abruptly ends with the child's parents vowing legal action. What the hosts and guests don't know, however, is that this moment will ignite a chain of events that will uncover long-buried secrets within this group of friends and family... and vigorously challenge the core values of everyone involved.'
Source: NBC (http://www.nbc.com/the-slap). (Sighted: 3/2/2015)
Unit Suitable For
AC: Year 11 (Literature Unit 3). This unit could be suitably adapted for study at a tertiary level also.
Themes
Australian identity, families, identity, middle class values, morality, multiculturalism, relationships
General Capabilities
Critical and creative thinking, Ethical understanding, Information and communication technology, Intercultural understanding, Literacy
Barracuda
Sydney
:
Allen and Unwin
,
2013
Z1917126
2013
single work
novel
(taught in 10 units)
'He asked the water to lift him, to carry him, to avenge him. He made his muscles shape his fury, made every stroke declare his hate. And the water obeyed; the water would give him his revenge. No one could beat him, no one came close.
'His whole life Danny Kelly's only wanted one thing: to win Olympic gold. Everything he's ever done - every thought, every dream, every action - takes him closer to that moment of glory, of vindication, when the world will see him for what he is: the fastest, the strongest and the best. His life has been a preparation for that moment.
'His parents struggle to send him to the most prestigious private school with the finest swimming program; Danny loathes it there and is bullied and shunned as an outsider, but his coach is the best and knows Danny is, too, better than all those rich boys, those pretenders. Danny's win-at-all-cost ferocity gradually wins favour with the coolest boys - he's Barracuda, he's the psycho, he's everything they want to be but don't have the guts to get there. He's going to show them all.
'He would be first, everything would be alright when he came first, all would be put back in place. When he thought of being the best, only then did he feel calm.
'A searing and provocative novel by the acclaimed author of the international bestseller The Slap, Barracuda is an unflinching look at modern Australia, at our hopes and dreams, our friendships, and our families.
'Should we teach our children to win, or should we teach them to live? How do we make and remake our lives? Can we atone for our past? Can we overcome shame? And what does it mean to be a good person?
'Barracuda is about living in Australia right now, about class and sport and politics and migration and education. It contains everything a person is: family and friendship and love and work, the identities we inhabit and discard, the means by which we fill the holes at our centre. It's brutal and tender and blazingly brilliant; everything we have come to expect from this fearless vivisector of our lives and world. ' (Publisher's blurb)
'Christos Tsiolkas’ novel The Slap, written in 2008 has been named in Sydney Morning Herald’s list of the 25 best Australian novels in the last 25 years.'
'I was offered the opportunity to translate The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas into Czech in November 2010, two years after its original publication in Australia. The offer came from the publishing house Host, a growing and quite prestigious publisher focusing on original Czech poetry and fiction and quality literary translations of various genres. I was considered suitable because I had at the time five translations of full-length novels under my belt. The publishing house also relied upon my knowledge of the Australian context and my ability to conduct research in areas unfamiliar to me as I was a student of comparative literature in a post-graduate programme. Therefore, it entrusted me with a novel as complex and extensive as The Slap. There was also a very personal reason why the publisher picked me: like Tsiolkas, I have Greek ancestry, and the publisher thought that this, in particular, would help me understand the Greek dimension of Tsiolkas’s novel. After The Slap, I also translated Barracuda into Czech in 2014 – the last book by Tsiolkas published in Czech to date.' (Publication abstract)
'The politico-historical settings of Christos Tsiolkas’s novels The Jesus Man (1999) and The Slap (2008) compromise the expressions of self manifested by his transcultural characters. The failure of Howard-era multicultural policies combines with the economic rationalising of the culture wars and the xenophobic hysteria spread by Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party to haunt those marginalised by the Eurocentricity of Australian culture. As a result, the transcultural characters of The Jesus Man are forced to externalise an augmented version of their performative selves, compromised as they are by such cultural homogenisation; in The Slap, the failure of neoliberal multicultural policies manifests in the anxieties experienced by the characters. The characters of both novels are forced to confront these sociocultural, historical and psychological conflicts in a space laden with historical tensions, cultural erasure and political uncertainty. This article argues that Tsiolkas’s real-world fictional settings problematise the performance of his multicultural characters in ways that unsettle hegemonic constructions of Australian culture. In particular, I contend that from this tension, a blurred space emerges that offers a way forward for transcultural subjects: it is a liminal space in which cultural syncretism is encouraged, cultural performance is delimited, and hegemonic cultural norms are mitigated.'(Publication abstract)
'Drawing on theories and methodologies associated with the field of textual criticism and scholarly editing, as well as those associated with the field of book history, this article examines the publishing of Christos Tsiolkas’s novel The Slap in the United States. All aspects of the publication process are surveyed—including design, marketing, and screen adaptation—but this article devotes its greatest critical attention to the editorial process. Ultimately, it contends that reading a US edition of The Slap is a substantially different experience from reading an Australian edition. This groundbreaking argument is the result of several unique or rare critical decisions. This article is unique, firstly, in the scope of its examination of the publishing of an Australian book in the United States—considering editorial, design, marketing, and screen adaptation. Second, it is rare for its close analysis of a previously overlooked category of editorial variation between editions. Finally, this article is uncommon because its analysis of editorial variation is focused on a book that received editorial attention that is reflective of a contemporary industry standard, rather than an outlier case. What remains unknown, however, is how typical Tsiolkas’s The Slap is of US editions of contemporary books originally published in Australia.' (Publication abstract)
