The Fiction of Tim Winton: Earthed and Sacred (Sydney Studies in Australian Literature)

In The Fiction of Tim Winton, Lyn McCredden explores the eleven novels and four short story collections of an author whose works span the literary and popular divide. Throughout this work, McCredden shows Winton to be a writer of fearless and intelligent fiction, tackling themes such as belonging, gender, and redemption, all while sustaining a strong mainstream following.

Winton’s work spans many genres, ranging from children’s literature to theatrical plays to a suite of highly influential literary novels. Among many other awards, Winton has won the Miles Franklin Award a record four times, with Shallows in 1984, Cloudstreet in 1992, Dirt Music in 2002, and Breath in 2009. Dirt Music was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize in the same year, with his novel The Riders shortlisted for the 1995 Booker Prize. Along with a host of other literary prizes, including the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize in 1995 and both the New South Wales Premier’s and Queensland Premier’s Awards for The Turning, Winton is regarded as one of Australia’s most popular writers; his novel Cloudstreet has regularly been voted Australia’s Favourite Book by the ABC and the Australian Society of Authors. Cloudstreet has also achieved international success, and a theatrical adaption has toured the world to critical acclaim and adulation.

About the author
Lyn McCredden is a professor of Australian Literature and Literary Studies at Deakin University, Melbourne.

Sydney Studies in Australian Literature
The Sydney Studies in Australian Literature series publishes original, peer-reviewed research in the field of Australian literature. The series comprises monographs devoted to the works of major authors and themed collections of essays about current issues in the field of Australian literary studies. It offers well-researched and engagingly written re-evaluations of the nature and importance of Australian literature, and aims to reinvigorate the study of Australian literature both locally and internationally. It will be of interest to those researching, studying and teaching in the diverse fields of Australian literary studies.

Other available titles:

• Alex Miller: The Ruin of Time, Robert Dixon
• Contemporary Australian Literature: A World Not Yet Dead, Nicholas Birns
• Shirley Hazzard: New Critical Essays, ed. Brigitta Olubas
• The Fiction of Tim Winton: Earthed and Sacred, Lyn McCredden
• Coming in 2017 – Colonial Australian Fiction: Character Types, Social Formation and the Colonial Economy, Ken Gelder and Rachel Weaver

Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction: A Writing Life
1 Words and Worlds
2 “To Solicit a Becoming”: Masculine and Feminine in the Fiction of Winton
3 Falling
4 Narrative Redemptions
5 “Liquid Elites and Bonded Shame”:Winton and Class Identity
6 High and Popular: Straddling the Fiction Market
7 Becoming, Belonging
8 Winton’s Narratives: Market, Reading, Impact
Afterword
Works Cited
Index