Aphrodite's Breath

In life, as in myth, women are the ones who are supposed to stay home like Penelope, weaving at their looms, rather than leaving home like Odysseus. Meet eighty-five-year-old Barbara and her sixty-two-year-old writer daughter Susan, who asked her mother-on a whim-if she wanted to accompany her to live on the Greek island of Kythera. What follows is a moving unravelling of the mother-daughter relationship told in poetic, irresistible prose.

Aphrodite's Breath is a strikingly original, funny and forensic examination of love and finding home, amid the stories of the people, olives and wonders of the birthplace of Aphrodite.

Susan Johnson's work has been longlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award, the Dublin IMPAC Literary Award and shortlisted for the Queensland Premier's Prize, the Voss Literary Prize, the Christina Stead Award, the National Biography Award and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, among others.

'She has a knack for presenting what can be unbearable in reality, of rendering it on the page with tremendous heart.' Sydney Morning Herald