The sensational international bestseller by Australia's "preeminent contemporary novelist" ("The Age"), in his United States debut
Winner of the 2009 Commonwealth Writers' Prize, Christos Tsiolkas's "The Slap" is a riveting page-turner and a powerful, haunting rumination on contemporary middle-class family life. When a man slaps a child who is not his own at a neighborhood barbecue, the act triggers a series of repercussions in the lives of the people who witness the event-causing them to reassess their values, expectations, and desires. For readers of Jonathan Franzen and Tom Perrotta, this is a compelling account of modern society and the way we live today.

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 begins to tell us a story ... A retired porn star who 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, the mystery of art and its creation.

Daniel Kelly, a talented young swimmer, has one chance to escape his working-class upbringing. His astonishing ability in the pool should drive him to fame and fortune, as well as his revenge on the rich boys at the private school to which he has won a sports scholarship.

Everything Danny has ever done, every sacrifice his family has ever made, has been in pursuit of his dream. But when he melts down at his first big international championship and comes only fifth, he begins to destroy everything he has fought for and turn on everyone around him.

Tender and savage, Barracuda is a novel about dreams and disillusionment, friendship and family. As Daniel Kelly loses everything, he learns what it means to be a good person - and what it takes to become one.

From the international bestselling and Booker Prize nominated author of The Slap comes a blazingly brilliant new novel. Winner of the 2006 Age Fiction Prize Winner of the 2006 Melbourne Best Writing Award Part long-forgotten myth, part meditation on the violence and tragedy of contemporary Europe, Dead Europe is an unsettling story about blood lust and blood revenge; a novel of blazing brilliance from the acclaimed author of The Slap. Isaac, a young Australian photographer, is travelling through Europe. His whole life he has longed for the sophistication and wealth of the Europe of his father's stories, the Europe at the centre of civilization and culture. But behind the facade of a unified and globalized contemporary society, he finds a history-blasted wasteland, a place forever condemned by the ghosts of its unspeakable past. In the mountain village in the Balkans where his mother was born, he unearths ancient terrors that have not been laid to rest, and perhaps never can be.

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 begins to tell us a story ... A retired porn star who 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, the mystery of art and its creation.

'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?' In a far corner of the Roman Empire, a radical sect is growing. Alone, unloved and battling his sexuality, Saul scrapes together a living exposing these nascent Christians, but on the road to Damascus, everything changes. Saul - now Paul - becomes drawn into this new religion and its mysterious leader, whose crucifixion leaves followers waiting in limbo for his promised return. As factions splinter and competition to create the definitive version of Christ's life grows violent, he begins to question his new faith and the man at its heart. Damascus is an unflinching dissection of doubt, faith, tyranny, revolution, cruelty and sacrifice. A vivid and visceral novel with perennial concerns, it is a masterpiece of imagination and transformation.

A collection of urgent, thrilling and original stories from the award-winning, bestselling author of The Slap and Barracuda. Love, sex, death, family, friendship, betrayal, tenderness, sacrifice and revelation... This incendiary collection of stories from acclaimed writer Christos Tsiolkas takes you deep into worlds both strange and familiar, and introduces you to characters that will haunt you long after you have turned the final page.

Discover the explosive first novel from the author of The Slap Ari is nineteen, Greek, gay, unemployed, looking for something - anything - to take him away from his aimless existence in suburban Melbourne. Torn between the traditional Greek world of his parents and friends and the alluring, destructive world of clubs and drugs and anonymous sex, all Ari can do is ease his pain in the only way he knows how. 'One of the most significant contemporary storytellers at work today' Colm Toibin 'An addictive read' Stylist

Read Christos Tsiolkas's blogs on the Penguin Community.

Read a review of "The Slap" on WorldNews.tk.

Read a review of "The Slap" on Timesonline.co.uk.

In this powerful and riveting novel, literary phenomenon Christos Tsiolkas unflinchingly exposes the inner- workings of domestic life, friendship and parenthood in the twenty-first century, and reminds us of the passions and malice that family loyalty can provoke. When a man slaps another couple's child at a neighborhood barbecue, the event send unforeseeable shockwaves through the lives of all who are witness to it. Told from the points of view of eight people who were present, The Slap shows how a single action can change the way people think about how they live, what they want, and what they believe forever. "Tsiolkas is a hard-edged, powerful writer....The novel transcends both suburban Melbourne and the Australian continent, leaving us exhausted but gasping with admiration." -Washington Post
"This astute exploration of suburban aspirations and failings . . . . vividly demonstrates the wide-ranging effects of a single moment's rash decision. . . . Beyond simply igniting the plot, the fateful slap draws attention to generational and philosophical differences regarding family life and the complex political, social, and ethnic milieu of contemporary Australia." --Publishers Weekly
"Radiates with vitality as it depicts the messy complications of family life." -Booklist
"Complex and multilayered. ...intertwined lives and slowly revealed connections make for a singular reading experience." -Library Journal
"Wildly energetic and fearless, thrillingly about our lives now." - Helen Garner, author of The Spare Room
"A gripping suburban fable." - Men's Style
"Strikingly tender . . . it claws into you with its freshness and truth."--Sydney Morning Herald