Michael Winkler’s Griefdogg is a bruising Australian novel about sorrow, masculinity and and how to be loyal.

Its characters move through motels, regional towns and compromised family histories, carrying grief in small ways. A smell that cannot be scrubbed away, an animal instinct, a pressure looking for somewhere to go. It follows the distortions of grief, the shame, violence, obsession, memory and the stubborn need for attachment.

Winkler writes in clipped, tactile prose, moving between brutality and a dark, uneasy tenderness. The novel circles men who have inherited emotional silence and must improvise ways of living around it, often badly.For readers drawn to contemporary Australian fiction that is formally controlled but morally unruly, and to writers such as Tony Birch, Robbie Arnott or Christos Tsiolkas at their least consoling.

Text Publishing, 2026 reprint. Paperback. Very good condition with minimal visible shelf wear.