With the 2008 Man Booker Prize winner to be announced tomorrow, Tuesday 14th October (UK time), "The Age" has The book, based around 20-something Jasper Dean's account of his life with his father Martin, was originally commissioned as a short story by a magazine but, Toltz said, he just "couldn't bring myself to submit it".
"I thought I could expand it to a larger story, a slightly larger story, so I kept expanding it, and kept expanding it, and about 690 pages and five years later, I finished it," he said while in London ahead of the award ceremony at the Guildhall.
"I wanted to explore how it would be for the children of people who are crucified, or skinned alive, in the media, that was my first instinct.
"And also ... explore how a child of rebel could also rebel."In "The Australian", Elisabeth Wynhausen and John Zubrzycki profile two of the authors on the list, Toltz and Aravind Adiga, who have struck gold with their debut novels - both of whom the paper identifies as being Australian.
