Steve Toltz

You and your twin sister are called to a family meeting where your parents tell you they're splitting up.

Now, they want to have a clean break, no shared custody.

Instead, each child will live permanently with one of the parents.

And the way to decide which kid will live with which adult?

Well, how about rolling a dice?

I'm Clare Nicholls, and this is The Book Show, where I bring you conversations with your favourite fiction authors.

The Australian diplomat turned novelist Ian Chemish will join me soon.

He's written a page-turner inspired by his experience in the Balkans in the 1990s.

But first, let's get back to those parents deciding their children's future with a roll of the dice.

Now, this is the cruel and funny start to A Rising of the Lights, the new novel by Australian writer Steve Toltz.

Steve famously shortlisted for the Booker Prize for his very first novel, A Fraction of the Whole.

Hi, Steve.

Hi, Claire.

Thanks for having me.

It's a pleasure.

But this idea of rolling a dice to see which child will live with which parent, it's brutal.

Yeah, I think I found it a bit of both.

But I want people to get a bit of a sense of the tone and of the relationship between these parents who are probably some of my favourite characters in the book.

Can you read a little bit just from this prologue here where the parents have just rolled the dice?

Can you read to us what comes next?