News

UQP is delighted to announce that we have acquired the debut novel, Big Time, from Jordan Prosser, who won the 2022 Peter Carey Short Story Award.

Jordan Prosser is a writer, filmmaker and actor from Naarm/Melbourne. A graduate of the Victorian College of the Arts, his short films and screenplays have won multiple international accolades.

Big Time is set in a not-too-distant future Australia, where the Eastern states have become the world’s newest autocracy – a place where pop music is propaganda, science is the enemy, nationalism trumps all, and dissent or moral indecency are punishable by immediate and indefinite detention.

The novel opens as Julian Ferryman, bass player for The Acceptables, returns to Melbourne after a year abroad. He reconnects with his band as they prepare to record and tour their highly anticipated second album, and is given his first taste of a new designer drug, F, a powerful synthetic hallucinogen that gives users a glimpse of their own future. Rumour says, the more you take, the further you see – maybe even to the end of time. Big Time is an anti-fascist ode to the power of pop music and a satire about art in the face of entropy, all wrapped up in a spec-fic road trip saga – think Almost Famous meets Slaughterhouse-5.

Jordan Prosser says:

‘I’m beyond chuffed to be working with Aviva Tuffield and UQP on my first novel; it feels incredible to have their support behind this time-hopping, genre-bending project. Big Time spans multiple decades, features a sprawling, international cast of characters, and considers the responsibility of artists during times of great social unrest – should they be spearheading the revolution, or offering simple escapism? I also see this story as a lament for the end of your (my) 20s – it’s about having the scales fall from your eyes, seeing the world for what it truly is, then deciding what – and who – you’re determined to hold on to as the band plays you off.’

Aviva Tuffield says:

‘Big Time is an ambitious and wide-ranging novel, profound and entertaining in equal measure. It uses the structure of a road trip narrative, coupled with a unique sci-fi hook, to explore notions of fate and causality, Australian national identity, and the power of popular culture to change hearts and minds. It’s sharp and inventive, involving a drug that allows the characters to see their immediate future, even as the world around them appears to be going backwards (politically, culturally, technologically). It’s a wonderful premise and a very sophisticated novel, one that bears comparison to such books as Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad and David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas.’

UQP has acquired world rights and will publish in early 2024.

About Jordan Prosser

Jordan Prosser is a writer, filmmaker and performer from Naarm/Melbourne. A graduate of the Victorian College of the Arts, his short films and screenplays have won multiple international accolades, including the Shore Scripts International Screenwriting Prize and the Slamdance Screenplay Competition. In 2013 he was a participant in the Melbourne International Film Festival’s Accelerator Program with the short film Hungry Man, and in 2016 his film Tanglewood received completion funding through Screen Australia. He co-wrote the screenplay for Justin Dix’s horror feature Blood Vessel, released worldwide in 2020.

In theatre, Jordan has devised work and performed on stages across Australia, New Zealand, the UK, and South-East Asia. He currently writes for Australian Book Review.

In 2022, Jordan’s short story, ‘Eleuterio Cabrera’s Beautiful Game’, won the Peter Carey Short Story Award, and will be published in the Spring 2022 edition of Meanjin.

See more of his work at www.jordanprosser.com.

Content and photo credit: UQP.