Christos Tsiolkas is the author of six novels: Loaded (filmed as Head-On) The Jesus Man and Dead Europe, which won the 2006 Age Fiction Prize and the 2006 Melbourne Best Writing Award. The Slap won the Commonwealth Writer's Prize 2009 and was shortlisted for the 2009 Miles Franklin Literary Award and the ALS Gold Medal. His most recent novel, Barracuda, was published in 2014, followed by a collection of stories, Merciless Gods, in 2015. and He is also a playwright, essayist and screen writer. He lives in Melbourne.