New Release: Grimmish by Michael Winkler
Shortlisted for Australia's most prestigious literary prize, the Miles Franklin Award in 2022.
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.
WATCH: Michael Winkler on Grimmish
Praise for Grimmish
“The strangest book you are likely to read this year.” – JM Coetzee
"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
“Michael Winkler’s Grimmish is the best literary clinch you’ll ever read.” – Alex Cothren, Australian Book Review
“All the makings of a cult classic. It’s grotesque and gorgeous, smart and searching.” – Beejay Silcox, The Guardian
"One of those rare narratives that delights and repulses and hums with such madness and integrity that we wish, at its conclusion, only to return to our desks and to forget all the writing rules we were taught at school" – Oliver Mol, Sydney Review of Books
From rob mclennan's blog: 12 or 20 (second series) – an interview with Michael Winkler
