From Booklist
Although this is Australian author Tsiolkas’ fourth novel, it is the first to be published in the U.S. With its raw style, liberal use of profanity and racial epithets, and laserlike focus on the travails of suburban life, it is a down-and-dirty version of Tom Perrotta’s best-selling Little Children (2004). At a barbecue in a Melbourne suburb, a man loses his temper and slaps the child of the host’s friends. This incident unleashes a slew of divisive opinions, pitting friends and families against each other as the child’s parents take the man to court. Told from eight different viewpoints, the novel also deftly fills in disparate backstories encompassing young and old, single and married, gay and straight, as well as depicting how multiculturalism is increasingly impacting the traditional Aussie ethos. For good measure, the author also throws in male vanity, infidelity, and homophobia. Tsiolkas’ in-your-face style is sure to alienate some readers—the child’s parents, for example, are among the book’s most unlikable characters—but his novel, which won the 2009 Commonwealth Prize, fairly radiates with vitality as it depicts the messy complications of family life. --Joanne Wilkinson

It's an odd form of the disease called posterior cortical atrophy or Benson's Syndrome. It doesn't affect language or memory per se, but things like spelling and writing and will eventually affect his visual cortex if it hasn't already. He's dictating his novels now, but otherwise his intellect seems intact. Indeed, he has another Discworld novel coming out in a month or two and is working on a science fiction series with Stephen Baxter of which one volume's come out.

Twelve Patients is pretty intense, and he is quite descriptive. I like the way he brings in the whys and wherefores of both the patients and the system they are all caught up in.

Here is a review of The Slap from it's Amazon page: