“The strangest book you are likely to read this year.” – JM Coetzee
SHORTLISTED FOR THE MILES FRANKLIN LITERARY AWARD
Pain was Joe Grim’s self-expression, his livelihood and reason for being.
A superstar boxer who rarely won a fight, Grim distinguished himself for his extraordinary ability to withstand physical punishment.
In this wild and expansive novel, Michael Winkler moves between the present day and Grim’s 1908–09 tour of Australia, bending genres and histories into a kaleidoscopic investigation of pain, masculinity, and narrative.
Pain is often said to defy the limits of language. And yet Grimmish suggests that pain – physical and mental – is also the most familiar and universal human condition; and, perhaps, the secret source of our impulse to tell stories.
“A powerful blast of literary ingenuity and originality.” – Lloyd Jones, author of Mister Pip
‘Grimmish meets a need I didn’t even know I had. I lurched between bursts of wild laughter, shudders of horror, and gasps of awe at Winkler’s verbal command: the freshness and muscle of his verbs, the unstoppable flow of his images, the bizarre wit of the language of pugilism—and all the while, a moving subterranean glint of strange masculine tenderness.’ – Helen Garner
“All the makings of a cult classic. It’s grotesque and gorgeous, smart and searching.” – Beejay Silcox, The Guardian
Over de auteur
Michael Winkler is a writer from Melbourne, Australia, living on the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation. He is the author, co-author and editor of numerous books, and won the Calibre Essay Prize for ‘The Great Red Whale.’ His journalism, short fiction, reviews, and essays have been widely published, and anthologised. His novel, Grimmish, was short-listed for the Miles Franklin Literary Award in 2022.