Patrick White is the unAustralian writer who did more than any other writer in the twentieth century to create an imaginative language that we can call “Australian”, who unshackled us from the demand that we write as the English do, who recognised, through his own alienation and also through his profound love for his partner, that we were a migrant and mongrel nation forging our own culture and our own language.

In this passionate and electrifying short book, Christos Tsiolkas writes about his year spent reading Patrick White, of his ‘discovery and rediscovery of White as a writer.’ The result is a vivid introduction to and celebration of the Nobel prize-winning writer’s work that asks: what does it mean to us now?

In the Writers on Writers series, leading writers reflect on another Australian writer who has inspired and fascinated them. Provocative, crisp and written from a practitioner’s perspective, the series starts a fresh conversation between past and present, and writer and reader. It sheds light on the craft of writing, and introduces some intriguing and talented authors and their work.

Published by Black Inc. in association with the University of Melbourne and State Library Victoria.

Christos Tsiolkas is the award-winning author of five novels: Loaded, which was made into the feature film Head-On, The Jesus Man and Dead Europe. His novel The Slap won a Commonwealth Writers' Prize, was shortlisted for the 2009 Miles Franklin Literary Award, longlisted for the 2010 Man Booker Prize and has been twice adapted for TV. His latest novel, the bestselling Barracuda, has also been adapted for the screen and his short-story collection, Merciless Gods, was published to acclaim in 2014. Christos is also a playwright, essayist and screenwriter. He lives in Melbourne.