The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas

Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, THE SLAP was the most talked-about novel of 2010, and looks set to be one of the most read book of 2011.

At a suburban barbecue one afternoon, a man slaps an unruly boy. The boy is not his son. It is a single act of violence, but this one slap reverberates through the lives of everyone who witnesses it happen.