Boy Swallows Universe to star on screen and stage

Trent Dalton’s literary success story is about to exceed even his own wild imagination.

Trent Dalton is the author of literary success Boy Swallows Universe. Picture: AAP

His debut novel has sold 140,000 copies within 12 months and is in the running for a slew of book prizes, but Trent Dalton’s literary success story is about to exceed even his own wild imagination. Boy Swallows Universe is set to grace the screen and stage.

It is understood an inter­national film rights deal, involving several production com­panies, including one from Australia, will be announced in coming weeks.

At the same time, an Australian theatre group has agreed to develop a stage adaptation of the novel, with details expected next week.

While the movie deal remains under wraps, Dalton has talked with screenwriters associated with the project. How much of the script he will write himself is yet to be finalised.

He said it was possible the filmmakers would do “research missions to the sacred places in my life”: the Brisbane suburbs in which Boy Swallows Universe is set, and to the old Boggo Road Jail, which is central to the story.   “There were countless times in that real past that inspired that book where my brothers and I would escape from the darker suburban stuff into the magical world of film and television,’’ ­Dalton said yesterday.

“It’s deeply surreal to now see that story becoming a part of that world we ran to.

“I’m talking about this stuff that is kind of my own strange boyhood mythology with people who are genuine film and screenwriting heroes of mine.’’

Boy Swallows Universe, set in the 1980s, centres on 12-year-old Eli Bell, his 13-year-old brother Augustus, their mother and stepfather, who deal in drugs, their ­father, who drinks and reads, and real-life criminal Slim Halliday, whom the author knew in his childhood.

The novel has sold 140,000 copies, almost unheard of for a debutant Australian writer.

It has been sold into 34 ­Eng­lish language and translation markets. It was released in the US this month, where it received a glowing review from The Washington Post, and is due out in Britain next month.

The novel is nominated for prizes at both the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards and the Australian Book Industry Awards next week and in each case Dalton will go head-to-head with the writer he has been compared with, Tim Winton.

Dalton said the idea the book would become a movie “blows my tiny mind”.

“Even a hopeless dreamer like Eli Bell wouldn’t have dreamed such things,’’ he said.

“But it’s all real. It’s not us running to that world anymore. That world is running to us.”