Breath

A story of risk and learning one's limits by challenging death—now a major motion picture starring Simon Baker, Elizabeth Debicki, and Richard Roxburgh.

A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year


On the wild, lonely coast of Western Australia, two thrill-seeking teenage boys fall under the spell of a veteran big-wave surfer named Sando. Their mentor urges them into a regiment of danger and challenge, and the boys test themselves and each other on storm swells and over shark-haunted reefs. The boys give no thought to what they could lose, or to the demons that drive their mentor on into ever-greater danger. Venturing beyond all caution—in sports, relationships, and sex—each character approaches a point from which none of them will return undamaged.


"Stunning in the depth of its audacity . . . limitlessly beautiful prose." —The Washington Post Book World

"A tender, incisive, sometimes brutal, and always moving coming-of-age novel . . . The prose is always astonishing, the descriptions of sea and weather especially vivid . . . The book seems as simple, and as vital, as the act of breathing itself." —The Seattle Times

"Darkly exhilarating . . . a tautly gorgeous meditation on the inescapable human addiction to the monotony of drawing breath, 'whether you want to or not.'" —The New York Times Book Review

"A coming-of-age novel written with Tim Winton's customary tenderness and vivid sense of place and psychological truth . . . This is his most forceful and perfect novel to date." —Colm Tóibín, New York Times–bestselling author