Author(s): Patrick Allington

Essays & Criticism

A personal reflection and an ambitious, overarching reading of Maria Tumarkin as a writer, and her place in the contemporary Australian literary zeitgeist.Why is Maria Tumarkin a significant writer today?What are the worlds-personal, social, and intellectual-that have helped to form her perspective? Where does she fit within the circles of key Australian writers and thinkers? What are the boundaries that her work pushes against? And what future does she see for us in Australia and beyond?In Tumarkin, which inaugurates the Contemporary Australian Writers series, noted critic and author Patrick Allington registers his intellectual and emotional reaction to Maria Tumarkin's witty, often blunt, always complex interpretations of Australia and the world.In the era of the rushed think piece, Allington explores the depth of Tumarkin's persistent, historically informed concern with questions of personal and social belonging, disruption and dislocation. He asks how we might most usefully respond to a body of writing that is urgent, important and unsettling but contains no simple manifesto.