THE LIFE

The Life tells the story of world champion Australian surfer, Dennis Keith, and tells it from his point of view, from inside the very heart of the fame and madness that is The Life.

Now bloated and paranoid, former Australian champion surfer and legend Dennis Keith is holed up in his mother's retirement village, shuffling to the shop for an ice-cream every day, barely existing behind his aviator sunnies and crazy OCD rules, and trying not to think about the waves he'd made his own and the breaks he once ruled like a god. Years before he'd been robbed of the world title that had his name on it - and then drugs, his brother, and the disappearance and murder of his girlfriend and had done the rest. Out of the blue, a young would-be biographer comes knocking and stirs up memories he thought he'd buried. It takes Dennis a while to realise that she's not there to write his story at all. This is a superb novel, literary but accessible, as cool as anything the early Stones could have come up with, and funny, heartbreaking and humane. Dennis Keith is one of the all-time great Australian literary inventions and this book could well be a contender for Great Australian Novel. Daring, ambitious, dazzling, The Life is also as real as it gets. Malcolm Knox is one of Australian literature's rising stars. His previous novels include the internationally acclaimed debut Summerland (Picador UK and US), A Private Man (published by Bloomsbury UK as an Adult Book) and Jamaica (Old Street, UK). A Private Man won a Ned Kelly Award and was shortlisted for several major prizes. His third novel Jamaica was shortlisted for the Prime Minister's Award last year and won the Colin Roderick Award. He is also a two-time Walkley Awardwinning journalist and author of many non-fiction titles. He is an obsessive surfer, and writes about surfing and the surf with authority and great passion.