Susan Johnson in-conversation with Claudine Tinellis

In life, as in myth, women are the ones who are supposed to stay home like Penelope, weaving at their looms, rather than leaving home like Odysseus. 

Meet eighty-five-year-old Barbara and her sixty-two-year-old writer–daughter. Susan, who asked her mother—on a whim—if she wanted to accompany her to live on the Greek island of Kythera. What follows is a moving unravelling of the mother–daughter relationship told in irresistible prose.

Aphrodite's Breath is a strikingly original, funny and forensic examination of love and finding home, amid the stories of the people, olives and wonders of the birthplace of Aphrodite.

Susan Johnson is the author of eleven books (two non-fiction books, On Beauty, Melbourne University Press; a memoir on motherhood, illness and writing, A Better Woman); and eight novels, published in Australia and in Europe, the UK and US. Her ninth novel, From Where I Fell, was published in 2021 and was shortlisted…