Tim Winton is Australia’s best-loved novelist. His new work,Breath, is an extraordinary evocation of an adolescence spent resisting complacency, testing one’s limits against nature, finding like-minded souls, and discovering just how far one breath will take you. It’s a story of extremes—extreme sports and extreme emotions.
On the wild, lonely coast of Western Australia, two thrillseeking and barely adolescent boys fall into the enigmatic thrall of veteran big-wave surfer Sando. Together they form an odd but elite trio. The grown man initiates the boys into a kind of Spartan ethos, a regimen of risk and challenge, where they test themselves in storm swells on remote and shark-infested reefs, pushing each other to the edges of endurance, courage, and sanity. But where is all this heading? Why is their mentor’s past such forbidden territory? And what can explain his American wife’s peculiar behavior? Venturing beyond all limits—in relationships, in physical challenge, and in sexual behavior—there is a point where oblivion is the only outcome. Full of Winton’s lyrical genius for conveying physical sensation, Breath is a rich and atmospheric coming-of-age tale from one of world literature’s finest storytellers.
About the Author
Tim Winton was born in Perth, Western Australia, and is the preeminent Australian novelist of his generation. He has written twenty books, including the bestselling novels Cloudstreet, The Riders, and Dirt Music.
Industry Reviews
"Majestic . . . charged with physical danger, physical courage, and Winton's brand of rugged introspection." --The New York Review of Books
"Plunge into this novel and you, too, will be pulled under." --The Miami Herald
"Stunning in the depth of its audacity . . . limitlessly beautiful prose." --The Washington Post Book World
"Darkly exhilarating . . . a tautly gorgeous meditation on the inescapable human addiction to 'the monotony of drawing breath, ' whether you want to or not." --The New York Times Book Review
"Both a hymn to the beauty of flying on water and a sober assessment of the costs of losing one's balance, in every sense of the word." --The New Yorker
"A tender, incisive, sometimes brutal, and always moving coming-of-age novel . . . The prose is always astonishing, the descriptions of sea and weather especially vivid. . . . The book seems as simple, and as vital, as the act of breathing itself." --The Seattle Times