£12.99

THEORY & PRACTICE

michelle de kretser

New title by the winner of the 2023 Folio Prize

Winner of the 2025 Stella Prize for Fiction

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

‘The most thrilling fiction of the year…an absolute triumph’ Catherine Taylor, Financial Times

‘Michelle de Kretser has blown the doors off completely…Theory & Practice is a damned good book.’ John Self, The Times

‘Michelle de Kretser is to my mind one of the finest writers alive and Theory & Practice a lightning strike of a book.’ Ali Smith

‘Theory & Practice blazes with intelligence, passion and wit. I devoured it greedily in one glorious sitting.’ Sarah Waters

‘I loved it…raw, funny, truthful, youthful.’ Tessa Hadley

‘Theory & Practice is a wonder…startlingly, uncannily good’ 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 Kretser, one of the best writers in the English language, has written her most brilliant book yet. It is, in short, a masterpiece.’ Neel Mukherjee