A Fraction of the Whole

Steve Toltz was born in 1972 in Sydney. His first novel, A Fraction of the Whole, was released in 2008. It is a comic novel which tells the history of a family of Australian outcasts. The narration of the novel alternates between Jasper Dean, a philosophical, idealistic boy, who grows up throughout the novel and his father, Martin Dean, a philosopher and shut-in described at the start of the novel as "the most hated man in all of Australia" The novel has repeatedly been compared favourably to John Kennedy Toole's Pulitzer Prize winning novel A Confederacy of Dunces. A Fraction of the Whole was shortlisted for the 2008 Man Booker Prize and the 2008 Guardian First Book Award. His second novel, Quicksand, is expected to be published in 2015. He will be at the Oz, New Zealand festival of literature and arts program in 2015 in London. He will also be at the Sydney Writers Festival 2015.