Cirrus@Austlit

'The term “experimental fiction” can be used to cover a multitude of sins: an almost petulant obsession with abstraction and a disdainful disregard for the experience of the reader, among them. When it works, though, we have novels in the tradition of Kafka, Woolf and Foster Wallace. The very best experimental writers have an inspired and weird way of seeing the world that makes much realist fiction seem moribund. Elizabeth Tan’s debut novel-in-stories, Rubik, is in the latter category: it’s wonderful, brilliant and mind-bending, and a worthy heir to the experimental tradition. (Introduction)