Cirrus@Austlit

'Imagine growing up among the French aristocracy with eccentric parents, romantically involved in an endless pas de deux, who in everyday talk, as though it’s a matter of immediate concern, revisit the Versailles of Louis XVI, the Greece of Odysseus, the Rome of the ancient emperors, the Carthaginians and the French Resistance during Word War II.' (Introduction)

'Marcel Duchamp once said a painting that doesn’t shock isn’t worth painting. The French artist knew a thing or two about shock, that strange power art has to upset and surprise. The porcelain urinal he attempted to exhibit at the 1917 Society of Independent Artists show became a sensation after the committee refused to allow it. A urinal presented as art? It seems quaint to us today that anyone would consider it upsetting. We are used to the affronts that art so likes to give. Take a walk through MONA and see how far you go without being affronted.' (Introduction)

'Folding sensitive threads of erotica into mind-bending speculative fiction, Krissy Kneen’s latest novel is an ambitious genre hybrid that addresses both morality and mortality from unique vantage points. Yet An Uncertain Grace opens with an almost commonplace scene as a middle-aged literature lecturer proudly recounts to himself the robust procession of affairs he has cultivated with his female students over the years.' (Introduction)