WINNER OF THE STELLA PRIZE FOR FICTION 2025'The most thrilling fiction of the year ... an absolute triumph' Financial Times'I loved Theory & Practice ... raw, funny, truthful, youthful' Tessa Hadley'One of the finest writers alive...a lightning strike of a book' Ali SmithIt'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, a dismaying discovery throws her work on 'the Woolfmother' 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.