Turning

In these extraordinary tales about ordinary people from ordinary places, Tim Winton describes turnings of all kinds: second thoughts, changes of heart, nasty surprises, slow awakenings, abrupt transitions. The seventeen stories overlap to paint a convincing and cohesive picture of a world where people struggle against the terrible weight of their past and challenge the lives they have made for themselves.In The Turning Tim Winton gives us seventeen exquisite overlapping tales of second thoughts and mid-life regret – extraordinary stories of ordinary people from ordinary places. Here are turnings of all kinds – changes of heart, nasty surprises, slow awakenings, sudden detours – where people struggle against the terrible weight of the past and challenge the lives they’ve made for themselves.

‘Always a writer of crystalline prose, his lines of sinewy leanness achieve such clarity here that it seems one is reading line after line of perfect music . . . To read Winton is to be reminded not just of the possibilities of fiction but of the human heart’ The Times , ‘The laureate of Western Australia is back . . . this is like Carver, happily with a very large dose of Winton’ Time Out , 'These stories are threaded through with subtleties and oblique connections; to be fully appreciated, they need to be read more than once. But Winton's writing – vigorous, vivid, precise – is so good that you'd want to do that anyway’ Sunday Times, ‘Sublime. Winton is a great writer’ Daily Mail, ‘Vivid, elegiac and humorous . . . and told in a relaxed prose that frequently strikes sparks’ Daily Telegraph

Tim Winton has published over twenty books for adults and children, and his work has been translated into twenty-eight languages. Since his first novel, An Open Swimmer, won the Australian/Vogel Award in 1981, he has won the Miles Franklin Award four times (for Shallows, Cloudstreet, Dirt Music and Breath) and twice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize (for The Riders and Dirt Music). Active in the environmental movement, he is the Patron of the Australian Marine Conservation Society. He lives in Western Australia.