Tsiolkas wins $20,000 prize for The Slap

Australian author Christos Tsiolkas has won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for his
novel about suburban morality, The Slap.
Tsiolkas was named as the winner at the Auckland Readers & Writers Festival on
Saturday night, with the Melbourne-based author taking home the STG10,000 ($A20,018)
prize.
Tsiolkas tale of domestic life beat South African writer Mandla Langa, Britain's
Jhumpa Lahiri and Marina Endicott from Canada to the prestigious literary prize, and
followed his win in the South East Asia and South Pacific category in March.
The Slap focuses on the aftermath of incident at a backyard barbecue, when a man
slaps a child that is not his own, but is who guilty of misbehaving.
Prize judges said The Slap was a "big, ambitious book".
"(The Slap) explores the reverberations of this incident through the point of view
of eight people, each of whom negotiates the conflicting loyalties and tensions that
the slap engenders," the judges said.
"It is provocative in its scrutiny of the politics of the family and its portrayal
of the raw dynamics and precarious balance in relationships among grown-ups, and
between grown-ups and children."
Previous Australian winners of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize include Peter Carey,
Murray Bail, David Malouf and Kate Grenville.
Tsiolkas is also in the running for the Miles Franklin Award, to be announced in June.