Sydney Writers' Festival 2012

If you haven’t already experienced The Slap…

Summer is finally upon us and smoke from backyard barbecues fills the sky. With this in mind, we’ve chosen the The Slap as this month’s book club choice. The novel has caused plenty of debate and become a massive international bestseller.

‘Strikingly tender…a perfect summer book.’ Sydney Morning Herald.

About the book
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.

About the author
Christos Tsiolkas is the author of four novels: 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. He won Overall Best Book the Commonwealth Writers' Prize 2009, was shortlisted for the 2009 Miles Franklin Literary Award and won the Australian Literary Society Gold Medal for his latest novel, The Slap. He is also a playwright, essayist and screenwriter. He lives in Melbourne.

The Slap was recently adapted for television, and the 8 – part drama series screened on the ABC in 2011. Starring Melissa George, Jonaton LaPaglia and Alex Dimitriades, the series was received with critical acclaim and ratings success.

Watch an interview with Christos Tsiolkas

Did you watch the ABC adaption of The Slap? If so, how did it compare to your interpretation of the novel?

Which of the characters most irked you?

What do you think The Slap says about contemporary Australian life?

"Discomfort is sometimes what is most precious to me about great art,” Tsiolkas has told an interviewer. To what extent did you find The Slap an uncomfortable read?

Let us know your thoughts below.