The Life by Malcolm Knox

JUDGES' COMMENTS

Dennis Keith — known as DK — is a washed-up, overweight ex-surfing champion. Living with his Mum, DK ventures out for his daily Splice ice-cream but rarely further afield. When a young woman arrives wanting to write his biography, DK is at first suspicious, but eventually lets her in to his home and his world. With her arrival, everything is about to change.

In this engulfing suburban saga  of a former surfing star with obsessive compulsive tendencies, Malcolm Knox's soaring ambition is more than matched by his poetic, hypnotic prose and masterful command of story. DK is one of the most absorbing protagonists in recent Australian fiction — a challenging, frustrating, self-abnegating yet perhaps wise man who dares us not to care about him, a challenge rendered impossible by Knox's psychologically acute portrait of human ambition and human frailty. This novel is a gnarly three-metre wave, and Knox navigates it with breathtaking sure-footedness and moments of genius.