Theory & Practice

'Thrillingly original.'- Sigrid Nunez

'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

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, her work on the Woolfmother falls 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.

Michelle de Kretser, one of Australia's most celebrated writers, bends fiction, essay and memoir into exhilarating new shapes to uncover what happens when life smashes through the boundaries of art.

'In the midst of a late coming-of-age plot effervescent with romantic and intellectual misadventure, de Kretser considers memory-how we enshrine our cultural heroes and how we tell ourselves the stories of our own lives-with absolute rigor and perfect clarity. Structurally innovative and totally absorbing, this is a book that enlivens the reader to every kind of possibility. I savoured every word.' - Jennifer Croft, author of The Extinction of Irena Rey