Heart Cancer

Description

Frank Thornton has a problem. A jazz afficionado, recreational drug user, man-about-town and serial womaniser who likes a drink or two, nothing has swayed him from his determined hedonism until now. Frank's not unused to dawn awakenings on park benches, beatings by angry husbands, and days lost in an alcoholic haze, but one beating too many and the appearance in his life of the lovely novelist Xin Xin, has made him wonder whether a change of direction is in order. In this darkly humorous, refreshingly honest look at the lives a group of creative, likeable but flawed urbanites, Bill Leak examines the seedy underbelly of Australian life.

Bill Leak (born 1956 in Adelaide, SA) was a painter, a writer and the daily editorial cartoonist for The Australian. Leak won two News Awards for Cartoonist of the Year, nine Walkley awards for excellence in journalism, nineteen Stanley Awards from the Australian Cartoonists' Association and been an Archibald Prize finalist twelve times. His portraits of Bob Hawke and Bill Hayden hang in Parliament House, and his portraits of Sir Donald Bradman, Dick Woolcott mand Robert Hughes are in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery. Leak's novel Heart Cancer was published by ABC Books in 2005 and he has published three collections of his political cartoons: Drawing Blood, Moments of Truth and UnAustralian of the Year.