Breath

A Novel

By: Tim Winton

Narrated by: Troy Planet

Length: 5 hrs and 52 mins

Publisher's summary

Now a major motion picture, starring Simon Baker, Elizabeth Debicki, and Richard Roxburgh.

Breath, by renowned Australian author Tim Winton, is a story of risk, of learning one's limits by challenging death.

On the wild, lonely coast of Western Australia, two thrill-seeking teenage boys fall under the spell of a veteran big-wave surfer named Sando. Their mentor urges them into a regiment of danger and challenge, and the boys test themselves and each other on storm swells and over shark-haunted reefs. The boys give no thought to what they could lose, or to the demons that drive their mentor on into ever-greater danger. Venturing beyond all caution—in sports, relationships, and sex—each character approaches a point from which none of them will return undamaged.

©2008 Tim Winton (P)2018 W. F. Howes Ltd.

Critic reviews

“Darkly exhilarating...A tautly gorgeous meditation on the inescapable human addiction to 'the monotony of drawing breath,' whether you want to or not.” —The New York Times Book Review

“A tender, incisive, sometimes brutal, and always moving coming-of-age novel...The prose is always astonishing, the descriptions of sea and weather especially vivid....The book seems as simple, and as vital, as the act of breathing itself.” —The Seattle Times

“Breath is a coming-of-age novel written with Tim Winton's customary tenderness and vivid sense of place and psychological truth. He manages to portray brilliantly made characters against a mythic landscape, thus creating a narrative that is gripping and breath-taking both in its vast scope and in its use of emotional detail. This is his most forceful and perfect novel to date.” —Colm Toibin, author of The Master