Christos Tsiolkas

I'm not saying that Manolis was...

was the writer.

Patrick White, I think, was certainly the writer.

But I think what Manolis did, and Manolis, his family were refugees from the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

They were Greek Orthodox.

They were an emigre family that ended up across the globe.

And I think what

Manolis gave Patrick White was an understanding, a further understanding of what it meant to be an outsider.

And I think those themes started to present themselves in the novels.

And I think that was a great gift that Manolis gave his lover.

I think that for most of us,

the way we come to reading, and I came to reading really, really young.

I just, you know, I got sucked in and fell in love with reading as a pleasure from a very young age.

And that element of the reading experience, that it is a pleasure, you know, what do we say about it?

We got lost in the world, is of course still one of the reasons I keep reading and want to read.

But I think there is another kind of reading that we do, or can do, which is to be challenged to do work.

And, you know, I was in my late teens when I picked up The Aunt Story, and I had read a lot of literature, but...

But I was still reading only for pleasure.

And with The Aunt Story, and I describe it in the essay, I remember I was in a shared household and I couldn't unlock this book.

And I started reading it out loud.