Description
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.
"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
Author: Michael Winkler
Publisher: Coach House Books
Published: 04/25/2023
Pages: 224
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.80lbs
Size: 8.40h x 5.70w x 0.80d
ISBN13: 9781552454664
ISBN10: 1552454665
BISAC Categories:
- Fiction | Literary
- Fiction | World Literature | Australia
- Fiction | Biographical
About the Author
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.