Winner of the Australian/Vogel Award for Best First Novel, Tim Winton's An Open Swimmer is a meditation on past and present, a story of madness and murder, and of the punishing yet redemptive qualities of both fire and water.

A fishing trip marks the end of Jerra and Sean's friendship, although once, when they were younger and more innocent, it would have seemed unbelievable that the bond between them - first forged by their fathers, and later sealed with their blood - could ever be broken. But growing up has meant growing apart, the differences between them widening, sharpening their teasing words into something crueller and less easy to forgive.

`Winton's writing is a heady blend of muscular description, deep sentiment and metaphysics' - Sunday Telegraph