COMP CLOSED: WIN ‘The Echo Chamber’ by John Boyne

“What a thing of wonder a mobile phone is…”

This week’s book giveaway is from John Boyne – the author of The Heart's Invisible Furies and The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. Boyne's latest novel – The Echo Chamber – is filled with his characteristic humour and razor-sharp observation. It is a satiric helter skelter; a dizzying downward spiral of action and consequence, poised somewhere between farce, absurdity and oblivion. Here’s a synopsis:

What a thing of wonder a mobile phone is. Six ounces of metal, glass and plastic, fashioned into a sleek, shiny, precious object. At once, a gateway to other worlds – and a treacherous weapon in the hands of the unwary, the unwitting, the inept.

The Cleverley family live a gilded life, little realising how precarious their privilege is, just one tweet away from disaster. George, the patriarch, is a stalwart of television interviewing, a ‘national treasure' (his words), his wife Beverley, a celebrated novelist (although not as celebrated as she would like), and their children, Nelson, Elizabeth, Achilles, various degrees of catastrophe waiting to happen.

Together they will go on a journey of discovery through the Hogarthian jungle of the modern living where past presumptions count for nothing and carefully curated reputations can be destroyed in an instant. Along the way they will learn how volatile, how outraged, how unforgiving the world can be when you step from the proscribed path.

To err is maybe to be human but to really foul things up you only need a phone.

Sounds intriguing, right? And considering this book deals with the perils of the mobile phone, to be in to win a copy we’d like YOU to describe the world’s mobile phone addiction using just FIVE WORDS. Our favourite three entries will WIN a copy of the book!

Entries close midday Monday 9 August 2021, Sydney/Melbourne time.

THIS COMPETITION HAS NOW CLOSED. THANKS FOR YOUR ENTRIES! WINNERS WILL BE CONTACTED BY EMAIL AND ANNOUNCED IN OUR NEWSLETTER.