What happens when you take your 85-year-old mother to live with you on a Greek island? A strikingly original, funny, and forensic examination of love and finding home from the author of From Where I Fell.

'An awe-inspiring ability to explore emotional truths.' Daily Advertiser
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 poetic, irresistible prose.
Aphrodite's Breath is 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's work has been longlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award, the Dublin IMPAC Literary Award and
shortlisted for the Queensland Premier's Prize, the Voss Literary Prize, the Christina Stead Award, the National Biography
Award and the Commonwealth Writer's Prize, among others.
'She has a knack for presenting what can be unbearable in reality, of rendering it on the page with tremendous heart.'
Sydney Morning Herald
'One of the finest Australian writers.' The Australian