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Catapult

Theory & Practice

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Title
Title: Theory & Practice
Author: Michelle de Kretser
ISBN: 9781646222872
Publisher: Catapult
Published: 2025
Binding: Hardcover
Language: English
Number of Pages: 192
Condition Note: Excellent, unmarked copy with little wear and tight binding. We ship in recyclable American-made mailers. 100% money-back guarantee on all orders.
Publisher Description: WINNER OF THE STELLA PRIZE
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
A Washington Post Best Fiction Book of the Year

"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 Vulnerables

A 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 art

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.

What happens when our desires run contrary to our beliefs? What should we do when the failings of revered figures come to light? Who is shamed when the truth is told? Michelle de Kretser's new novel offers a spellbinding meditation on the moral complexities that arise in the gap between our values and our lives.