August Newsletter
We're counting down the days until we launch Axiomatic (September 3), the acclaimed work of narrative nonfiction by Ukrainian-born, Australian writer and cultural historian Maria Tumarkin. The book explores the ways we understand the traumas we inherit and the systems that sustain them.
Winner of the Melbourne Prize for Literature's Best Writing Award, Axiomatic has already been featured in The Millions, The Rumpus, and Publishers Weekly as a most-anticipated book of the fall—and was just selected by booksellers around the country as an Indie Next pick for September!
Axiomatic
In five sections―each one built on an axiom about how the past affects the present―Tumarkin weaves together 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 struggle inside and against the criminal justice system, a larger-than-life Holocaust survivor, and the history of the author’s longest friendship.
With verve, wit, and critical dexterity, Tumarkin asks questions about loss, grief, and how our particular histories inform the people we become in the world. Axiomatic introduces an unforgettable voice.
"Tumarkin presents a remarkable tour de force . . . These essays will linger in readers’ minds for years after."—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
"The reader’s equivalent of catching lightning in a bottle, Axiomatic showcases a brilliant and perceptive mind . . . Full of grace and insight, it is an exceptional book."—Foreword Reviews, Starred Review
"No one can write like Maria Tumarkin: she charges headlong into the worst and best of us, with an iron refusal to soften or decorate; sentences bare of artifice, stripped back to the bone, to the nerve; fired by raging grief and love."—Helen Garner, author of The Children’s Bach
"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, The Guardian
Maria Tumarkin on Tour
Maria Tumarkin will be coming to the US in September to launch Axiomatic. Here's where you'll be able to see her:
Friday, September 20, 7:00
Community Bookstore | Brooklyn, NY
in conversation with Rebecca Godfrey, author of Under The Bridge
Sunday, September 22, time to be announced
Brooklyn Book Festival | Brooklyn, NY
together with Edwidge Danticat, author of Breath, Eyes, Memory, and David Chariandy, author of Brother
Tuesday, September 24, 7:00
East Bay Booksellers | Oakland, CA
in conversation with writer and critic Ismail Muhammad, reviews editor for The Believer
The Dinner Guest in The New York Times
The New York Times reviews Gabriela Ybarra's The Dinner Guest (tr. Natasha Wimmer), which was longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize:
The eponymous dinner guest in Ybarra’s debut novel is death itself, invisible but with plate, glass, knife and fork, in this lucid dissection of political violence and open secrets. Ybarra, a Spanish writer from the Basque region, creates a “free reconstruction” of the story of her family, one of about a dozen who dominated positions of power in the late 1970s in the Vizcaya province, where “everything was a politics of the family.”
You can still get The Dinner Guest, along with the rest of our titles by women in translation, for 25% off the cover price with the discount code #WITMonth through the end of August.