Editions

The Sound of One Hand Clapping

The Sound of One Hand Clapping

FROM THE WINNER OF THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2014

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, her mother disappeared into a blizzard never to return.

Thirty-five years later, Sonja returns to the place of her childhood to visit her drunkard father. The shadows of the past begin to intrude ever more forcefully into the present, changing forever his living death and her ordered life.

Reviews

  • Enthralling and powerful

    The Times

  • This is a confident and poignant novel and succeeds in animating a set of people rarely seen in literary fiction

    Guardian

  • A rare and remarkable achievement

    Los Angeles Times

  • Destined to be a classic

    Melbourne Herald Sun

  • The Sound of One Hand Clapping achieves the difficult task of making clear and real the lives of those who normally stay hidden in history. From its wonderfully atmospheric opening to its touching conclusion, this is a heartbreaking story

    Literary Review

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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.

Richard Flanagan

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Podcasts

Ghost writing and criminal minds

'A life isn't an onion to be peeled, a palimpsest to be scraped back to some original, truer meaning. It's an invention that never ends.'
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Recommendations

The novels of Richard Flanagan

Journalist Kim Forrester looks back at Richard Flanagan, considered ‘Australia’s best kept secret’ until he won the Man Booker Prize in 2014
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Features

Richard Flanagan

Richard Flanagan talks about the events which inspired The Narrow Road to the Deep North including his own experiences as a child of Burma's Death Railway

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