The Slap

by Christos Tsiolkas

A man slaps a child at a barbecue. Australia's fault lines open up.

For you if

you want to understand contemporary Australia through a single incident that reveals every tension the country prefers not to name

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$22 MSRP · Paperback
Reference price shown. Other editions may be available.
At a suburban Melbourne barbecue, a man slaps someone else's child who isn't his. The novel follows eight characters — each one a different face of contemporary Australian society — as they navigate the fallout. Tsiolkas uses this single incident to dispatch from inside every fault line of modern Australia: class, race, immigration, parenting, sexuality, violence. The most uncomfortable Australian novel on this shelf and the most honest about what contemporary Australian society actually looks like when you remove the self-congratulatory multiculturalism from the surface.

WHERE THIS BOOK LIVES

Setting
Australia
Voice
Written by a Australia author
Themes
Witness