Minimum of Two

‘These stories are a wonderful introduction to his quirky fictional world – gutsy, funny, lyrical but unpretentious Independent

Tim Winton’s second short-story collection explores the complexity of human relationships through the themes of futility and hope, revenge and redemption, birth and death that twist through each tale in turn, emerging, re-emerging, competing, conflicting. As characters, too, surface and reappear, their lives are slowly, painstakingly revealed. Through frozen moments and stolen glances, their stories – and histories – are told, their emotions exposed, their souls stripped bare. Threaded together by Tim Winton’s haunting prose, the tales in Minimum of Two ultimately offer an optimistic view of the world in which we live.

‘Winton . . . writes with a muscular looseness which is suited perfectly to the people and places he is describing’ The Times

‘Tim Winton has cracked something essential about modern Australia: how to find meaning in the intimate and terrible parts of contemporary family life, set against a landscape which is inhumanly vast’ Evening Standard

‘The vividness and clarity that Mr Winton responds to in nature are also beautifully embodied in his own writing’ The Economist