The Boy Behind the Curtain

This highly acclaimed collection of memoirs is Winton's most intimate and revealing work yet. Along with Island Home and Land's Edge (both also first published in paperback in 2017), it forms the remarkable culmination of Winton's autobiographical trilogy, showing our finest novelist also to be one of our finest writers of non-fiction.

'Being a copper's son, I've always got one eye out for trouble. I can't help it. But I don't go looking for it anymore.'

In Tim Winton's fiction, chaos shapes the lives of his characters. So too Winton's own life. The extraordinarily powerful true stories that make up The Boy Behind the Curtain take us behind the scenes, revealing the accidents, both serendipitous and traumatic, that have influenced his view of life and fuelled his distinctive artistic vision.

By turns impassioned, funny, joyous, astonishing, this is Winton's most personal book to date, an insight into the man who's held us enthralled for three decades and helped us reshape our view of ourselves. Behind it all, from risk-taking youth to surprise-averse middle age, has been the crazy punt of staking everything on becoming a writer.