The Jesus Man

From the international bestselling and Booker Prize nominated author of The Slap comes a blazingly brilliant new novel. One of the earliest Christos Tsiolkas novels - a dark, violent, pornographic and vividly imagined portrayal of family life behind closed doors. The Jesus Man tells the story of one family, trapped between conflicting identities - while the parents were born Greek and Italian, the three sons, Dom, Tommy and Louie, have grown up as Australians. Haunted by their history and increasing inability to relate to each other, Tommy inexorably descends into a cycle of violence, pornography and madness. When he commits a terrible crime, his family must try to come to terms with the terrifying stranger he had become, and the hell that living had been for him. With page-turning, thrilling urgency, Tsiolkas' uncompromising and darkly humorous examination of the soulless void that life can become, detached from reality by technology, is an extremely powerful and timely novel, reminding us once again of his talent and originality as a writer.

Christos Tsiolkas is the author of The Slap, whichwon the Commonwealth Writer's Prize 2009 and was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2010. He lives in Melbourne.