Theory & Practice

＂It’s 1986, and ’beautiful, radical ideas’ are in the air. The narrator of Theory & Practice, a young woman originally from Sri Lanka, arrives in Melbourne for graduate school to research the novels of Virginia Woolf. In the bohemian neighborhood of St. Kilda she meets artists, activists, students--and Kit. He claims to be in a ’deconstructed relationship.’ They become lovers, and the narrator’s feminism comes up against her jealousy. Meanwhile, an entry in Woolf’s diary upends what the narrator knows about her literary idol, and throws her own work into disarray＂--

MICHELLE DE KRETSER’S fiction has been praised by Hilary Mantel, Anita Desai, Ursula K. Le Guin, and A.S. Byatt, among many others. She is the author of six previous novels, including the Miles Franklin Award winners, Questions of Travel and The Life to Come, the Man Booker Prize long-listed The Lost Dog, and Kirkus Prize finalist Scary Monsters.