books > THEORY & PRACTICE
192pp Demy Hdbk
ISBN: 9781914502163
£12.99
THEORY & PRACTICE
michelle de kretser
New title by the winner of the 2023 Folio Prize
It’s 1986, and ‘beautiful, radical ideas’ are in the air. A young woman arrives in Melbourne to research the novels of Virginia Woolf. In bohemian St Kilda she meets artists, activists, students—and Kit. He claims to be in a ‘deconstructed’ relationship, and they become lovers. Meanwhile, a dismaying discovery throws her work on ‘the Woolfmother’ into disarray.
Theory & Practice is a mesmerising account of desire and jealousy, truth and shame. It makes and unmakes fiction as we read, expanding our notion of what a novel can contain.
Praise for theory & practice
‘Michelle de Kretser is a genius—one of the best writers working today. She is startlingly, uncannily good at naming and facing what is most difficult and precious about our lives. Theory & Practice is a wonder, a brilliant book that reinvents itself again and again…There’s no writer I’d rather read.’ V.V. Ganeshananthan, author of Brotherless Night winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction
‘One of the living masters of the art of fiction’ Max Porter.
‘Michelle de Krestser, one of the best writers in the English language, has written her most brilliant book yet. It is, in short, a masterpiece.’ Neel Mukherjee
Michelle de Kretser was born in Sri Lanka and emigrated to Australia as a teenager. She was educated in Melbourne and Paris. She is the author of six other novels, most recently Scary Monsters, which won the 2023 Rathbone Folio Prize. She has also won the Miles Franklin Award (twice) and has been longlisted for both the Man Booker and Orange Prize. She lives in Sydney.
‘Michelle de Kretser’s fiction does more than beckon us in; it requires us to show up…It’s magnificent, peerless writing.’ Beejay Silcox, Guardian
‘A dazzlingly accomplished author who commands all the strokes. Her repertoire stretches from a hallucinatory sense of place to a mastery of suspense, sophisticated verbal artistry and a formidable skill in navigating those twisty paths where history and psychology entwine.’ Boyd Tonkin, Independent
‘On the contemporary international scene, there are very, very few writers who can match her style, her intelligence, her vision. To read her is to be changed.’ Neel Mukherjee, author of The Lives of Others
‘I so much admire Michelle de Kretser’s formidable technique – her characters feel alive, and she can create a sweeping narrative which encompasses years, and yet still retain sharp, almost hallucinatory detail.’ Hilary Mantel