Shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

‘A brilliant reflection on the instability of personality and memory, written in page-turning style’ –The Daily Telegraph

Fred Scully is determined to carve a new life for himself and his young family in Ireland. For months he has laboured alone to make their dilapidated cottage habitable, and now his wife and child are coming to meet him: this will be their fresh start. But when he arrives at the airport to collect them, only his small daughter steps off the plane . . .

So begins Tim Winton’s The Riders. This is Scully’s desperate journey across Europe, trying to track down the wife he comes to realize he didn’t know.

‘An intricate, magnificently readable novel’ – The Sunday Telegraph

‘Makes the senses jump. Concentrated, passionate, invigorating’ – The Independent

Part of the Picador Collection, a series showcasing the best of modern literature.

Prizes

Winner of Commonwealth Foundation Writer's Prize for Best Book 1995 (UK),Short-listed for Man Booker Prize 1995 (UK)

'The Riders is about the painful process of learning to live without illusions, without false anticipation . . . Furious and vital . . .a celebration – of the messiness of life and of the force of good fiction' -- The Guardian
A brilliant reflection on the instability of personality and memory, written in page-turning style * The Daily Telegraph *
An intricate, magnificently readable novel * The Sunday Telegraph *
Makes the senses jump. Concentrated, passionate, invigorating * The Independent *
'We don’t literally believe in the ghosts, just as we don’t always believe in Billie’s precociousness. But Scully is real. His hope and his pain are as real as a slant of light, a hangover, a laugh, the smell of dirty socks; and we follow this pilgrim’s progress with a heart-catching sense of our own soul’s fragility' -- Los Angeles Times
'Winton has forced a different kind of thinking about men and their imperatives, about the value and meaning of action . . . The Riders is a grand, poised, metaphorical reconciliation' -- Sydney Morning Herald
'At its breaking heart is a fearless exploration of how well we can ever really know each other . . . Winton is not a great Australian novelist; he is a great novelist full stop' -- The Times

Tim Winton is widely considered one of the greatest living Australian writers. Since his first novel, An Open Swimmer, won the Australian/Vogel Award in 1981, he has won the Miles Franklin Award four times (for Shallows, Cloudstreet, Dirt Music and Breath) and twice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize (for The Riders and Dirt Music). He lives in Western Australia.