You chew up your ideas pretty fast when you're young. Why did it take him seven years to finish Dirt Music, a story which begins with 'a couple of scraps of imagery, a naked man embracing a boab tree, a woman stepping into the body of a guitar'? But in an enviable career which began right after he left university 20 years ago, he's also published seven children's books and two works of non-fiction - roughly one book for every year of his professional writing life. And welcome.'ĭirt Music is Winton's seventh novel. If I get a letter from Poland or Finland, Norway or Italy, it's always wonderful. 'They respond to it emotionally and they respond to it in terms of what they call the music of the prose. I think that's patently true in publishing and I think that's what they would prefer in Europe.' You know, they like them to be accommodatingly Australian, gently Australian, tamely Australian. 'I know I should be more careful than this, but sometimes you get the impression they have a version of an Australian writer who they would prefer one to be. I think perhaps I'm too sleepy today to be careful.

I think a lot of people thought Cloudstreet should have been the one. Maybe some are, I'm sure.'Īsked if The Riders was the novel of his most deserving of a Booker shortlist, he says: 'I don't think I should answer that. But I really hope writers aren't only thinking about their Booker plans every year. I know my publisher would like to see me get a shortlisting.

Yeah, I'm not lying awake at night worrying about the Booker Prize, or anybody's prize. but I'm not anxious to win the Booker Prize. 'People want to win the Booker because it's good for business, good for your publisher. 'Mate, believe me, I couldn't care less about it,' he says.

In terms of the WA prize, it was great - it gave me the chance to promote the. Well that's just a recipe to driving yourself nuts. Or you'll start writing with a view to cracking the prizes. Otherwise you'll give yourself a broken heart, you know. 'I've been doing it long enough to know that it's a bit of a crapshoot, a bit of a lottery and you can't take it too seriously. If you lose it doesn't mean yours isn't the best book,' he says. 'You get a little bit of affirmation, which is nice, but you can't take it too seriously because if you win it doesn't mean necessarily that yours is the best book. Winton sparked a minor controversy back home in Perth by immediately donating the $25,000 purse from the WA award to the fighting fund for the campaign he is heading against 'a hideous white-shoe development' planned for the pristine whale shark breeding ground at Ningaloo Reef in WA.

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