Theory & Practice: A Novel by Michelle de Kretser (2/18/25)

"Theory & Practice is a thrillingly original hybrid work that seeks truthful answers to the most difficult questions of the day—questions about the nature of love, art, and desire, about the thorny cultural legacy of colonialism and the unappeasable human yearning for connection." —Sigrid Nunez, author of The VulnerablesA new novel of startling intelligence from prizewinning Australian author Michelle de Kretser, following a writer looking back on her young adulthood and grappling with what happens when life smashes through the boundaries of artIt’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. Mean