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  • Published: 1 December 2011
  • ISBN: 9781742756103
  • Imprint: Random House Australia
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 448

The Sound Of One Hand Clapping




From the winner of the Man Booker Prize. One of the most-loved and biggest-selling literary novels in Australian history.

From the winner of the Man Booker Prize. One of the most-loved and biggest-selling literary novels in Australian history.

In the winter of 1954, in a construction camp in the remote Tasmanian highlands, when Sonja Buloh was three years old and her father was drinking too much, Sonja's mother walked into a blizzard never to return.

Some thirty-five years later, when Sonja visits Tasmania and her drunkard father, the shadows of the past begin to intrude ever more forcefully into the present - changing for ever his living death and her ordered life...

The Sound of One Hand Clapping is about the underbelly of Australia, the barbarism of Europe, and the destiny of those in the country beyond hope who seek to redeem themselves through love.

'Heart-wrenching and beautifully written... A rare and remarkable achievement' -- Los Angeles Times

  • Published: 1 December 2011
  • ISBN: 9781742756103
  • Imprint: Random House Australia
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 448

About the author

Richard Flanagan

Richard Flanagan was born in Tasmania in 1961. His novels Death of a River Guide, The Sound of One Hand Clapping, Gould’s Book of Fish, The Unknown Terrorist, Wanting and The Narrow Road to the Deep North have received numerous honours and are published in 42 countries. He won the Man Booker Prize for The Narrow Road to the Deep North in 2014.

Also by Richard Flanagan

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Praise for The Sound Of One Hand Clapping

‘From its wonderfully atmospheric opening to its touching conclusion, this is a heartbreaking story, beautifully told’

Literary Review (London)

‘haunting and unforgettable’

Canberra Times

‘Heart-wrenching and beautifully written... a rare and remarkable achievement. Given its subject matter it could have been as grittily depressing as anything by Zola or Orwell, yet somehow amid all the relentless squalor, what Orwell called the “crystal spirit” shines indomitably through’

Los Angeles Times

‘The novel that moved me to tears’

Sydney Morning Herald

‘A story about redemptive love, a celebration of the resilience of individuals and of their power to change... deeply moving, eventually uplifting’

Adelaide Advertiser

‘An almost unbearably sad story... an epic tragedy conducted under the author’s microscope which requires fortitude and a man-sized box of tissues to get through... this novel is a passionately literary account of one of this country’s formative experiences’

Sunday Age