February 2019 Fiction & Entertainment Backlist - P&W

Waiting Philip Salom

Waiting
Philip Salom


Paperback | Mar 2016 | Puncher and Wattmann | 9781922186836 | 346pp | 210x143mm | GEN | AUD$29.95, NZD$34.99

Shortlisted for the 2017 Miles Franklin Award, the Prime Minister's Award for Fiction and the Victorian Premier's Award for Fiction

Big is a hefty cross-dresser and Little is little. Both are long used to the routines of boarding house life in the inner suburbs of Melbourne, but Little, with the prospect of an inheritance, is worrying Big with by indulging in dreams of home owenership. Little's cousin, Angus, is a solitary man who designs lake-scapes for city councils, and fireproof houses for the bushfire zone. A handy man, he meets Jasmin — an academic who races in her ideas as much as in her runners. Her head is set on publishing semiotics books on semiotics, her heart is turned towards her stalled personal life. All four are waiting, for something, if not someone.

'I knew Philip was a poet but it was obvious to me by the final round that he was also a wonderful storyteller. As you are about to see, I was right.' — John Clarke

'Stories with flashes of poetry and sudden insight and such profound compassion that they should be labelled — WARNING: Could make the reader kinder. Send a copy to a politician'. — Sue Woolfe