Dirt Music [Paperback]

'Written in seemingly effortless prose that never puts a foot wrong' Sunday Times

Shortlisted for the 2002 Booker Prize, this is a generous, raw, captivating novel about the possibility and power of love.

‘Generous, earthy and raw . . . Mysteries don’t come more heartfelt than this’ Independent Georgie Jutland is a mess. At forty, with her career in ruins, she finds herself stranded with a fisherman she doesn’t love and two kids whose dead mother she can never replace. Her days have fallen into domestic tedium and social isolation. Her nights are a blur of vodka and pointless loitering in cyberspace. One morning, in the boozy pre-dawn gloom, she looks up from the computer screen to see a shadow lurking on the beach below, and a dangerous new element enters her life. Luther Fox, the local poacher. Jinx. Outcast. So begins an unlikely alliance. Set in the wild landscape of Western Australia, this is a novel about the odds of breaking with the past, a love story about people stifled by grief or regret, whose dreams are lost, whose hopes have dried up. It’s a journey across landscapes within and without, about the music that sometimes arises from the dust. ‘Winton keeps writing fiction that makes the novel feel alive to a continent of possibilities’ Evening Standard ‘Winton is not a great Australian novelist; he is a great novelist, full stop’ The Times

Tim Winton was born in Perth in 1960. His work includes novels, collections of stories, non-fiction and books for children. He has won the miles Franklin Award three times, and been twice shortlisted for the Booker Prize, for The Riders (1995) and Dirt Music (2002).