The critically acclaimed new novel from Folio Prize-winning author Michelle de Kretser - now in paperback

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 Smith It'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. Michelle de Kretser, one of Australia's most celebrated writers, bends fiction, essay and memoir into exhilarating new shapes to uncover what happens when life smashes through the boundaries of art.

"de Kretser is one of the most quietly thrilling writers around -so sharp, funny and inventive that I can only envy anyone who hasn't had the joy of reading her" - Daily Mail

"The most thrilling fiction of the year...an absolute triumph" - Financial Times

"Is it a novel? is it a memoir? Is it an essay? Who cares. Michelle de Kretser has blown the doors off completely ...Theory & Practice is a damned good book" - Times

"So sharp, funny and inventive that I can only envy anyone who hasn't had the joy of reading her" - Daily Mail

"An ever-inventive novel alive throughout to the urgent necessities of desire ...a beguiling talent ... precise and involving" - Observer

"this book is truly elegant, its tone one of generous curiosity" - Irish Times

"Funny and experimental...the prose shimmers" - Literary Review

"Ferociously intelligent ...This searching novel offers (de Kretser's) characteristic blend of moral clarity, bite, and sumptuous style" - Kirkus starred review

"Magnificent, peerless writing" - Guardian