It has also been called offensive and cynical and 'unbelievably misogynistic' 'the whole novel has this ludicrous comedy-macho sensibility,' objected journalist India Knight. An international bestseller well before the Booker judges longlisted it, and the winner of the 2009 Commonwealth writers' prize, The Slap has been described as 'riveting from beginning to end' (by Jane Smiley in the Guardian Review) 'powerful', 'dazzling', a 'modern masterpiece' 'Neighbours as Philip Roth might have written it' (according to the Sunday Times), and 'reminiscent of Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections and Don DeLillo's Underworld' (thus Colm Toíbín, rather naughtily, as it is produced here by an imprint he co-runs and who has been friends with Tsiolkas for years). It then unfolds in seven intense chapters, each from the point of view of one of the guests. The Slap begins at a suburban barbeque in Melbourne, where one of the guests administers said slap to a three-year-old brat who is not his own. He bows when we meet – 'it's just the way I grew up' – and leads us flusteredly around the lobby of a luxury hotel on the seafront outside Dublin, where he is doing a reading as part of an extended publicity tour, looking for a quiet corner in which his very quiet voice won't be drowned out by the clatter of breakfast plates. F or someone who has written what has been called the most divisive Booker-nominated novel in years – partly because it is so angry and bleak, so full of potential, sometimes realised, violence – Christos Tsiolkas seems a gentle man, sweet and eager to please.

The slap tsiolkas