Spirals and monuments: on poetics, narrative and memorialization

A Reading Across Borders talk by Professor Gail Jones

Chaired by Lucy Neave, Lecturer in the School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics

Professor Gail Jones, winner of the Sydney PEN award and the Nita B. Kibble prize among many others, will give an informal talk on the conceptual frameworks of her recent novel, A Guide to Berlin.

Beginning with Nabokov’s story of the same title (1925), the talk will cover the aesthetics of the everyday, textual preoccupations with memory and memorialization and ‘afterness’ as an issue for the ethics of writing. Nabokov’s interest in spiral shapes is the guiding trope of this talk.

Geordie Williamson, writing in The Australian, describes A Guide to Berlin as ‘an unashamedly cerebral work that will only gain by rereading; but it is also, like its Nabokovian parent, a narrative that pulses with feeling. Its pages finally summon not one ghost but millions of them.’

Gail Jones is the author of two short-story collections, a critical monograph, and the novels Black Mirror, Sixty Lights, Dreams Of Speaking, Sorry and Five Bells. Three times shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award, her prizes include the WA Premier's Award for Fiction, the Nita B. Kibble Award, the Steele Rudd Award, the Age Book of the Year Award, the Adelaide Festival Award for Fiction and the ASAL Gold Medal (from the Random House website).

The Reading Across Borders series, convened by the English Program in the School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics, brings writers of renown and experts in the study of literature to ANU.

Books will be available for purchase from the Co-op bookshop.

This event is free and all are welcome.