Australian novelist Michelle de Kretser was born in Sri Lanka and immigrated to Australia when she was fourteen. She worked for many years as an editor at Lonely Planet and was responsible for setting up their French series as well as a travel literature series, Journeys. The author of several award-winning novels, de Kretser published her most recent, The Life to Come, in 2017. It won the 2018 Miles Franklin Literary Award and the 2019 Christina Stead Prize for Fiction. A short monograph, On Shirley Hazzard, was published in 2019.
De Kretser lives in Sydney, where she is an honorary associate of the English Department at the University of Sydney. Her fiction is both vividly grounded in place and transnational. Her settings include Australia, Ceylon/Sri Lanka, France, Italy, and India. A. S. Byatt has described de Kretser as “a master storyteller who writes quickly and lightly of wonderful and terrible things.” Neel Mukherjee called her “preternaturally attuned to the patient rage of history,” while Hilary Mantel notes de Kretser’s “formidable technique.”
In this conversation, de Kretser and Roberta Trapè discuss tourism as privilege, casual racism, Australian politics, Shirley Hazzard, and the role of clothes in fiction.
Roberta Trapè: Your writing is deeply connected with the idea of movement, translation from one place to another, often migration. And with history, I would say. Are there particular reasons for these interests?
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Denne historien er fra Summer 2020-utgaven av World Literature Today.
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Our Revenge Will Be the Laughter of Our Children
What is it about the revolutionary that draws our fascinated attention? Whether one calls it the North of Ireland or Northern Ireland, the Troubles continue to haunt the land and those who lived through them.
Turtles
In a field near the Gaza Strip, a missile strike, visions, and onlookers searching for an explanation.
Surviving and Subverting the Totalitarian State: A Tribute to Ismail Kadareby Kapka Kassabova
As part of the ceremony honoring Kadare as the 2020 laureate—with participants logging in from dozens of countries around the world— Kadare’s nominating juror, Kapka Kassabova, offered a video tribute from her home in Scotland.
Dead Storms and Literature's New Horizon: The 2020 Neustadt Prize Lecture
During the Neustadt Prize ceremony on October 21, 2020, David Bellos read the English language version of Kadare’s prize lecture to a worldwide Zoom audience.
Ismail Kadare: Winner of the 2020 Neustadt International Prize for Literature
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, World Literature Today presented the 2020 Neustadt Festival 100 percent online. In the lead-up to the festival, U.S. Ambassador Yuri Kim officially presented the award to Kadare at a ceremony in Tirana in late August, attended by members of Kadare’s family; Elva Margariti, the Albanian minister of culture; and Besiana Kadare, Albania’s ambassador to the United Nations.
How to Adopt a Cat
Hoping battles knowing in this three-act seduction (spoiler alert: there’s a cat in the story).
Chicken Soup: The Story of a Jewish Family
Chickens, from Bessarabia to New York City, provide a generational through-line in these four vignettes.
Awl
“Awl” is from a series titled “Words I Did Not Understand.” Through memory—“the first screen of nostalgia”—and language, a writer pieces together her story of home.
Apocalyptic Scenarios and Inner Worlds
A Conversation with Gloria Susana Esquivel
Marie's Proof of Love
People believe, Marie thinks, even when there’s no proof. You believe because you imagine. But is imagination enough to live by?
