Seven and a Half

Christos Tsiolkas

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English

Allen & Unwin
03 October 2023

Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945); Australian Fiction

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

Winner of the 2021 Melbourne Prize for Literature

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.

Praise for Seven and a Half:

'Powered by his electric, at times fevered intelligence, Christos Tsiolkas offers his many readers a multi-layered novel that refuses to be categorised...

The audacity of Tsiolkas is still a thrill. And, dare one say it, necessary.' - The Canberra Times

'Expansive and effusive in its glorification of the natural world.' - Good Reading

'Full of lavish and finely detailed descriptions...this ever-present physicality, this sense of liveliness in and alertness to the world is the biggest pleasure of the book - it is sumptuous and evocative, beautiful - a celebration.' - The Guardian

'Tsiolkas writes with heady sensuality, overlaying the thick swathes of tastes, smells, sights and sounds onto the page...this is a vulnerable admission of how much of themselves writers put into their work.' - Readings

'Captivating stuff.' - The Sydney Morning Herald

By: Christos Tsiolkas
Imprint: Allen & Unwin
Country of Publication: Australia
Dimensions: Height: 198mm, Width: 128mm,
Weight: 244g
ISBN: 9781761470288
ISBN 10: 1761470280
Pages: 368
Publication Date: 03 October 2023
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Christos Tsiolkas is the author of eight novels, including Loaded, which was made into the feature film Head-On, The Jesus Man and Dead Europe, which won the 2006 Age Fiction Prize and the 2006 Melbourne Best Writing Award, as well as being made into a feature film. His fourth novel, the international bestseller The Slap, won Overall Best Book in the Commonwealth Writers' Prize 2009, was shortlisted for the 2009 Miles Franklin Literary Award, longlisted for the 2010 Man Booker Prize and won the Australian Literary Society Gold, as well as the 2009 Australian Booksellers Association and Australian Book Industry Awards Books of the Year. Christos's fifth novel Barracuda was shortlisted for the ALS Gold Medal and the inaugural Voss Literary Prize. The Slap and Barracuda were both adapted into celebrated television series. Christos's acclaimed collection of short stories, Merciless Gods, was published in 2014 and his critical literary study On Patrick White came out in 2018. His sixth novel, Damascus, was published in 2019 and won the 2019 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Fiction. 7 1/2 was published in 2021 and won the 2021 Melbourne Prize for Literature. Christos's latest novel, The In-Between is published in 2023. He is also a playwright, essayist and screen writer. He lives in Melbourne.