Charting Tsiolkas’s Literary Development through Adaptations

Abstract

ABSTRACT Christos Tsiolkas’s fiction has inspired a robust body of academic work over the past decade. Scholars have commented on how his novels, short stories and critical essays offer penetrating insights into various themes relating to contemporary Australian society and politics. By comparison, less scholarly attention has been devoted to televisual and cinematic adaptations of his work. This article redresses this omission in scholarship about Tsiolkas by providing an overview of his novels’ adaptations. It does so in order to make sense of the adaptations in the context of his literary development and growing popularity with a mainstream audience. Starting with Head On (directed by Ana Kokkinos, 1998) and ending with Barracuda (directed by Robert Connolly, 2016), this article shows that the adaptations create a narrative in which Tsiolkas’s mainstream success has coincided with a departure from the linguistic and thematic provocations of his earlier fiction.