AustLit

'In Tim Winton's Short Story, "Blood and Water," from the celebrated collection Minimum of Two (1987), the narrator experiences the fear and joy of birth, associating birth with the sacred and the ordeal baby Sam Nilsam has to undergo in order to heave his first breath and connect with the outside world through a flow of excrement, blood, water and suffering. Breath, Winton's most recently published novel and winner of the Miles Franklin Award, suggests some of these ideas in the depiction of a boy's discovery and experience of the world of surf and surfers on the Western Australian coast. The novel encapsulates some of Winton's major concerns: adolescence and manhood, place and the environment, life in Western Australia, identity, culture and politics. It raises questions about eco-philosophical nature, issues of identity and place, all the more as it was published in the same year as newly elected Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's Apology to the Stolen Generations, a highly symbolic speech which marked the nation's desire to move forward, beyond colonization, urging Australians to build a new history resulting from both an ending (the recognition of past injustices) and a beginning (the desire to unite and embrace the multicultural ideal).' (Author's introduction)