Aphrodite's Breath

What happens when you take your 85-year-old mother to live with you on a Greek island? A strikingly original, funny, and forensic examination of love and finding home from the author of From Where I Fell.

'Heartbreaking, funny and deeply moving...This is writing to savour.' Books + Publishing

'An awe-inspiring ability to explore emotional truths.' Daily Advertiser

In life, as in myth, women are the ones who are supposed to stay home like Penelope, weaving at their looms, rather than leaving home like Odysseus. Meet eighty-five-year-old Barbara and her sixty-two-year-old writer–daughter Susan, who asked her mother—on a whim—if she wanted to accompany her to live on the Greek island of Kythera. What follows is a moving unravelling of the mother–daughter relationship told in irresistible prose.

Aphrodite's Breath is a strikingly original, funny and forensic examination of love and finding home, amid the stories of the people, olives and wonders of the birthplace of Aphrodite.

Susan Johnson's work has been longlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award, the Dublin IMPAC Literary Award and shortlisted for the Queensland Premier's Prize, the Voss Literary Prize, the Christina Stead Award, the National Biography Award and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, among others.

'She has a knack for presenting what can be unbearable in reality, of rendering it on the page with tremendous heart.' Sydney Morning Herald

'One of the finest Australian writers.' The Australian

About the Author

Susan Johnson is the author of eleven books (two non-fiction books, On Beauty, Melbourne University Press; a memoir on motherhood, illness and writing, A Better Woman); and eight novels, published in Australia and in Europe, the UK and US. Her ninth novel, From Where I Fell, was published in 2021 and was shortlisted for the Voss Literary Award. She has lived in Hong Kong, Paris, London and most recently in Greece. Her sons, Caspar and Elliot, live in London.