The multi-award-winning Boy Swallows Universe is a coming-of-age story about love, crime, magic and fate by one of Australia’s most exciting new novelists, The Australian journalist Trent Dalton. On the violent fringes of 1980s Brisbane lives Eli, a 12-year-old boy with a mute brother, lost father, imprisoned mother and heroin-dealing stepdad. Trent chats with Matthew Condon about Eli’s search for love and friendship as they discuss this novel’s exhilarating fusion of originality, pathos, humour and charm.