Cloudstreet

From separate catastrophes two rural families flee to the city and find themselves sharing a great, breathing, shuddering house called Cloudstreet, where they begin their lives again from scratch. For 20 years they roister and rankle, laugh and curse until the roof over their heads becomes a home for their hearts. A word-of-mouth sensation when it was first published over 30 years ago, Tim Winton’s magical epic of love and acceptance is an Australian classic whose appeal endures undiminished.

About the Author :
Tim Winton is the acclaimed and award-winning Australian author of more than 30 books for adults and children, including two Booker Prize–shortlisted novels Dirt Music and The Riders. His work has been translated into more than 24 languages and adapted for film, television, stage and radio. He has won the Miles Franklin Award a record four times: for Shallows (1984), Cloudstreet (1992), Dirt Music (2002) and Breath (2009). The Turning also won the 2005 Christina Stead Prize for Fiction while Cloudstreet regularly appears in lists of Australia's best-loved novels. His latest novel is Juice (2024). Winton has been named as a National Living Treasure by the Australian National Trust and awarded the Centenary Medal by the Australian government for services to literature and the community. Winton was appointed as an Officer of the Order of Australia in the 2023 King's Birthday Honours for ‘distinguished service to literature as an author and novelist, to conservation, and to environmental advocacy’. Winton is patron of the Tim Winton Award for Young Writers sponsored by the City of Subiaco, Western Australia and is the patron of two environmental advocacy organisations: the Australian Marine Conservation Society and the Stop the Toad Foundation. He lives in Western Australia. Peter Hosking is an actor with 40 years of stage, film and television experience and has narrated over 160 audiobooks. He toured Australia with the stage show Certified Male, appeared on television in Blue Heelers and on-screen in Pride, Siam Sunset, The Wogboy and Razor Eaters. Now living in Europe, he has toured with stage shows within Australia, New Zealand, Europe, the USA and Egypt as well as filming in the Czech Republic, Denmark, the Canary Islands and Poland. He continues to record for Bolinda from his base in Prague.

Review :
'One of those rare novels that warm the heart, as well as spark the imagination.' 'Nothing short of magnificent ... a wonderful read.' ‘This is that rare book, a novel of both heart and intellect. It pulses with a sense of wonder and shines with the clear light of truth.’ "With sensitivity and vision, novelist Tim Winton creates an Australian classic that takes the listener into the world of two wholly believable working-class families in post-WWII Perth. The Pickles family inherits, but cannot afford to keep, Cloudstreet, a rambling, ramshackled house – so they take in the Lambs as their boarders. The Pickles are an irreligious, indolent lot, while the Lambs are pious and hard-working. Peter Hosking's performance is true to Winton's unsentimental exploration into humankind's ability to love and survive amid adversity. Hosking handles the mundane and the mystical with equal assurance. His characterizations, including an Aboriginal ghost and a talking pig, are earthy, real, and frequently hilarious. Hosking makes the most of Winton's honesty, wit, and original imagery."