Dark horses

Elisabeth Wynhausen and John Zubrzycki writing in The Australian profile two debut Australian novelists in the running to win the 2008 Man Booker prize October 11, 2008

THE image that fills the screen when you go to Steve Toltz's website stevetoltz.com is a colour photograph of a pile of battered old books: literary, foreign books by the likes of Jorge Luis Borges, Thomas Bernhard and Knut Hamsun. Click on "events" and there is an image of the rumpled, dark-haired author in his shades reading a copy of Spanish daily El Pais.
"There's no greater pressure than getting into your 30s and having failed at everything else," says author Steve Toltz

But for the moment, Toltz is in Sydney, packing up his apartment before he and his wife, Marie, fly to London for Tuesday's announcement of the 2008 Man Booker Prize. Toltz's sprawling, rumbustious first novel, A Fraction of the Whole, has been short-listed for the £stg50,000 ($112,000) prize. Seasoned novelist Amitav Ghosh's Sea of Poppies may be the favourite, but a few tipsters believe the Australian debut novelist will win.

"I have no insight into the minds of these judges," Toltz says, when asked the inevitable question. "There is something so arbitrary about prizes." But being oceans from the action is making him feel disconnected. In London weeks ago, friends reported seeing posters blaring the banner headline "Short list announced". "I guess I won't realise how big it is until I get over there," he says.

Toltz is reading the other five short-listed books, whose authors include Ireland's Sebastian Barry (The Secret Scripture), Britons Linda Grant (The Clothes on Their Backs) and Philip Hensher (The Northern Clemency), and Australian national Aravind Adiga (The White Tiger). "So far so good," he says. "I'm in excellent company."

Considering it is concerned with metaphysical questions, Toltz's novel carries the reader along with immense gusto, even if some may have wished for a somewhat smaller Fraction of theWhole.

Read the full piece at The Australian online.