How to speak of the searing, unpindownable power that the past - ours, our family's, our culture's - wields in the present? In five long sections, Maria Tumarkin's Axiomatic tells true and intimate stories of a community dealing with the extended aftermath of a suicide, a grandmother's quest to kidnap her grandson to keep him safe, one community lawyer's battle inside and against the justice system, the effects of multigenerational trauma, and the history of the author's longest friendship. In writing that is inventive, bold, and generous, Axiomatic is a brilliantly inventive exploration of how the past shapes our culture.

About the Author

Maria Tumarkin is a writer and cultural historian. She is the author of three previous books of ideas, Traumascapes, Courage, and Otherland, all of which received critical acclaim in Australia, where she lives. Her most recent work, Axiomatic, won the 2018 Melbourne Prize for Literature's Best Writing Award.

Reviews

New Yorker Best Books of 2019 | New Statesman Books of the Year 2020

'Maria Tumarkin's shape-shifting Axiomatic deploys all the resources of narrative, reportage and essay. It is a work of great power and beauty.'
- Pankaj Mishra, author of The Age of Anger

'[Axiomatic] is comprised of restless, gorgeous essays, each of which uses an aphorism - "time heals all wounds," "you can't enter the same river twice" - to reflect on Tumarkin's preoccupations: trauma, the ongoingness of the past, and the unworkability of language. Tumarkin takes up subjects like youth suicide and the plight of homeless people in North Melbourne, but her approach is never maudlin.'
- Katy Waldman, New Yorker

'The work of a virtuoso ... Like Maggie Nelson's, Tumarkin's is the kind of writing that makes much creative nonfiction seem clumsy and rudimentary, as if everyone else is writing way too many words about smaller, pettier ideas.'
- The Believer

'Tumarkin presents a remarkable tour de force ... These essays will linger in readers' minds for years after.'
- Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

Book Information
ISBN 9781913097110
Author Maria Tumarkin
Format Paperback
Page Count 224
Imprint Fitzcarraldo Editions
Publisher Fitzcarraldo Editions