The Sound of One Hand Clapping

Front Cover
Grove Press, 2001 - Fiction - 432 pages
A sweeping novel of world war, migration, and the search for new beginnings in a new land, The Sound of One Hand Clapping was both critically acclaimed and a best-seller in Australia. It is a virtuoso performance from an Australian who is emerging as one of our most talented new storytellers. It was 1954, in a construction camp for a hydroelectric dam in the remote Tasmanian highlands, where Bojan Buloh had brought his family to start a new life away from Slovenia, the privations of war, and refugee settlements. One night, Bojan's wife walked off into a blizzard, never to return -- leaving Bojan to drink too much to quiet his ghosts, and to care for his three-year-old daughter Sonja alone. Thirty-five years later, Sonja returns to Tasmania and a father haunted by memories of the European war and other, more recent horrors. As the shadows of the past begin to intrude ever more forcefully into the present, Sonja's empty life and her father's living death are to change forever. The Sound of One Hand Clapping is about the barbarism of an old world left behind, about the harshness of a new country, and the destiny of those in a land beyond hope who seek to redeem themselves through love.
 

Selected pages

Contents

1954
1
1967
9
1989
17
1989
20
1989
26
1954
30
1989
33
1989
35
1990
241
1990
247
1954
259
1966
263
1966
270
1966
274
1966
276
1966
278

1954
41
1989
47
1989
50
1989
55
1954
64
1989
70
1989
74
1959
80
1959
84
1959
93
1989
97
1989
101
1989
105
1989
114
1959
119
1959
123
1960
132
1989
137
1960
143
1960
150
1960
156
1989
163
1990
168
1990
173
1990
180
1990
184
1961
189
1961
192
1961
200
1961
204
1961
213
1962
219
1962
225
1962
230
1990
235
1990
238
1966
280
1966
281
1966
285
1966
289
1966
294
1990
299
1990
302
1990
303
1990
306
1967
314
1967
318
1967
321
1967
327
1990
330
1990
336
1990
338
1990
342
1990
350
1990
352
1990
360
1990
364
1990
371
1954
376
1990
383
1954
386
1954
390
1954
396
1954
398
1990
405
1954
407
1990
411
1990
414
Chapter 85
417
Chapter 86
417
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

About the author (2001)

Richard Flanagan was born in Longford, Tasmania, in 1961. He received a Master of Letters degree from Oxford University. His first novel, Death of a River Guide, won Australia's National Fiction Award. His works include The Sound of One Hand Clapping, The Unknown Terrorist, and four history books. He has received numerous awards including the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Gould's Book of Fish, the 2011 Tasmania Book Prize for Wanting, and the 2014 Man Booker Prize for The Narrow Road to the Deep North. He directed a feature film version of The Sound of One Hand Clapping. He was also shortlisted for the UK Indie Booksellers Award with The Narrow Road to the Deep North. This same title was won the Margaret Scott Prize for best book by a Tasmanian writer 2015. In 2018, The Narrow Road to the Deep North will be made into an international television series. The University of Melbourne has appointed him as the Boisbouvier Founding Chair in Australian Literature at the University of Melbourne, a new professorship to 'advance the teaching, understanding and public appreciation of Australian literature'.

Bibliographic information