Seven and a Half

Winner of the 2021 Melbourne Prize for Literature

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

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