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Cover image courtesy of publisher.
y separately published work icon In the Garden of the Fugitives single work   novel  
Issue Details: First known date: 2018... 2018 In the Garden of the Fugitives
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Almost twenty years after forbidding him to contact her, Vita receives an email from her old benefactor, Royce. Once, she was one of his brightest protégées; now her career has stalled and Royce is ailing, and each has a need to settle accounts.

'Beyond their murky shared history, both have lost beloveds, one to an untimely death, another to a strange disappearance. And both are trying to free themselves from deeper pasts, Vita from the inheritance of her birthplace, Royce from the grip of the ancient city of Pompeii and the secrets of the Garden of the Fugitives. Between what’s been repressed and what has been excavated are disturbances that reach back through decades, even centuries.

'Addictive and unsettling, In the Garden of the Fugitives is a masterpiece of duplicity and counterplay, as brilliantly illuminating as it is surprising – about the obscure workings of guilt in the human psyche, the compulsion to create, and the dangerous morphing of desire into control. It is the breakthrough work of one of Australia’s most exciting emerging writers'. (Publication summary)

Notes

  • Epigraph: 'And, as lovers of volcanoes know, radical change is always worth watching.' -Inga Clendinnen

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • Melbourne, Victoria,: Penguin , 2018 .
      image of person or book cover 5605092704175583573.jpg
      Cover image courtesy of publisher.
      Extent: 320p.
      Note/s:
      • Published: 26th February 2018

      ISBN: 9781926428598
    • Melbourne, Victoria,: Hamish Hamilton , 2018 .
      image of person or book cover 8560166295995710964.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 320p.
      Note/s:
      • Published 5 July 2018

      ISBN: 9780241982440
    • New York (City), New York (State),
      c
      United States of America (USA),
      c
      Americas,
      :
      Farrar Straus and Giroux ,
      2018 .
      image of person or book cover 6308439788874442891.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 320p.
      Note/s:
      • Published 22 May 2018

      ISBN: 9780374226640
    • London,
      c
      England,
      c
      c
      United Kingdom (UK),
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Penguin ,
      2019 .
      image of person or book cover 7368413568724457654.jpg
      Cover image courtesy of publisher.
      Extent: 320p.
      Note/s:
      • Publication date 04 April 2019
      ISBN: 9780241982433, 9780241982433
Alternative title: Au jardin des fugitifs : roman
Language: French

Other Formats

Works about this Work

Interrogating the Self : Colonialism and Female Identity in Ceridwen Dovey’s In the Garden of the Fugitives Rose Symonds , 2023 single work criticism
— Appears in: Current Writing : Text and Reception in Southern Africa , vol. 35 no. 1 2023; (p. 71-83)
'This article analyses the representation of identity in Ceridwen Dovey’s In the Garden of the Fugitives. It is an autobiographical text focusing on issues of guilt, complicity and entanglement that resonates with a literature of shame, as recently identified in postcolonial studies. Vita, the protagonist, expresses how she is creatively blocked by her guilt as a beneficiary of apartheid and this is mirrored in her relationship with Royce where she is a beneficiary of his powerful and wealthy patronage. Vita’s story, highlighting feminist issues of complicity, is also a metafictional device that represents the writer’s feelings about her post-apartheid, colonial identity. In a series of confessional letters between herself and Royce, Vita maps her journey to selfhood. My paper critically examines the literary and deconstructive features of Dovey’s text in which a rite of passage is represented as a textual interrogation of self.' 

(Publication abstract)

y separately published work icon At Home with Ceridwen Dovey Astrid Edwards (interviewer), 2020 23452168 2020 single work podcast interview

'Ceridwen Dovey writes fiction, creative non-fiction, and in-depth essays and profiles. Born in South Africa, she grew up between South Africa and Australia, went to Harvard University on scholarship as an undergraduate, and did her postgraduate studies in social anthropology at New York University.

'Her debut novel, Blood Kin, was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Award and selected for the U.S. National Book Foundation’s prestigious "5 Under 35" honours list.

'Her second book, Only the Animals, won the inaugural Readings New Australian Writing Award, the Steele Rudd Award for a short story collection in the Queensland Literary Awards, and was co-winner of the People's Choice Award for Fiction at the NSW Premier's Literary Awards.

'Her 2018 novel, In the Garden of the Fugitives was longlisted for the 2019 ABIA Awards. Life After Truth, published in 2020, is her latest work.' (Production introduction)

With Love, Royce S. Kirk Walsh , 2018 single work review
— Appears in: The New York Times , 2 September 2018; (p. 14)

— Review of In the Garden of the Fugitives Ceridwen Dovey , 2018 single work novel
Excavating the Past : Ceridwen Dovey’s Garden of the Fugitives Sophia Barnes , 2018 single work essay
— Appears in: Sydney Review of Books , May 2018;

'In the Garden of the Fugitives is Ceridwen Dovey’s second novel, and her third book-length publication. Her debut Blood Kin was published in 2007, followed in 2014 by the short story collection Only the Animals. These three very different works, each with their layers of interwoven stories, voices now in concert, now in conflict, attest to the originality of Dovey’s conceptually complex writing.' (Introduction)

Where the Bodies Are Buried Adam Rivett , 2018 single work column
— Appears in: The Monthly , April no. 143 2018; (p. 54-56)

'While reading fiction as little more than smuggled autobiography is an inherently crass and undergraduate approach to literary criticism, I’d nonetheless like to start that way. I have, after all, something close to the author’s permission. Pondering the lacerations of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle in these pages only a few years ago, Ceridwen Dovey, in an essay titled “The Pencil and the Damage Done”, wrote:

'I kept being distracted by my own horror at what Knausgaard was doing, slashing away at his world, and by the overwhelming feeling that it would cost him too much as a human being. I googled his wife, his uncle, his mother, even his children, fixating on the walking wounded surrounding the living author.

'Upon reading Dovey’s new novel, In the Garden of the Fugitives (Hamish Hamilton; $32.99), I, too, googled, and under the “Early Years and Education” subheading of her Wikipedia page found a life story remarkably similar to that of the novel’s central character, Vita. The childhood in South Africa and Australia, the schooling at Harvard, the early career in filmmaking. All there, all echoing unignorably. The living author was insisting upon conflation with a fictional creation.' (Introduction)

With Love, Royce S. Kirk Walsh , 2018 single work review
— Appears in: The New York Times , 2 September 2018; (p. 14)

— Review of In the Garden of the Fugitives Ceridwen Dovey , 2018 single work novel
Ceridwen Dovey : In the Garden of the Fugitives CR , 2018 single work essay
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 24 February - 2 March 2018;

'A friend and I recently argued about Only the Animals by Ceridwen Dovey. A collection of stories about the souls of 10 animals caught up in wars of the 20th century, each of the animals also bears a relationship to a famous literary figure, such as Kerouac or Tolstoy, and often the animal has a proclivity for mimicking the author’s voice. I argued that the strength of the book was that anyone could have thought of it, but only Ceridwen Dovey could have pulled it off so well. My friend argued not only that she pulled it off so beautifully, but that it’s a miracle anyone came up with the idea at all.' (Introduction)

Ceridwen Dovey : 'When You Take up Your Pen, You’re Taking up a Position of Power' Lou Heinrich , 2018 single work column
— Appears in: The Guardian Australia , 26 February 2018;

'The South African-born Australian author of In the Garden of the Fugitives reflects on white privilege, shame and the complexities of art.'

Vita and Royce Ashley Hay , 2018 single work essay
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , April no. 400 2018; (p. 55)

'I was never brave enough to visit Pompeii, partly due to an overactive imagination that combined a sense of the ferocity of Vesuvius’s blast in 79 CE and the volcano’s ongoing muttering with thoughts of the city’s Roman residents, cauterised in the eruption: outstretched hands; a dog expiring mid-roll; a mother and her child.' (Introduction)

Where the Bodies Are Buried Adam Rivett , 2018 single work column
— Appears in: The Monthly , April no. 143 2018; (p. 54-56)

'While reading fiction as little more than smuggled autobiography is an inherently crass and undergraduate approach to literary criticism, I’d nonetheless like to start that way. I have, after all, something close to the author’s permission. Pondering the lacerations of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle in these pages only a few years ago, Ceridwen Dovey, in an essay titled “The Pencil and the Damage Done”, wrote:

'I kept being distracted by my own horror at what Knausgaard was doing, slashing away at his world, and by the overwhelming feeling that it would cost him too much as a human being. I googled his wife, his uncle, his mother, even his children, fixating on the walking wounded surrounding the living author.

'Upon reading Dovey’s new novel, In the Garden of the Fugitives (Hamish Hamilton; $32.99), I, too, googled, and under the “Early Years and Education” subheading of her Wikipedia page found a life story remarkably similar to that of the novel’s central character, Vita. The childhood in South Africa and Australia, the schooling at Harvard, the early career in filmmaking. All there, all echoing unignorably. The living author was insisting upon conflation with a fictional creation.' (Introduction)

Excavating the Past : Ceridwen Dovey’s Garden of the Fugitives Sophia Barnes , 2018 single work essay
— Appears in: Sydney Review of Books , May 2018;

'In the Garden of the Fugitives is Ceridwen Dovey’s second novel, and her third book-length publication. Her debut Blood Kin was published in 2007, followed in 2014 by the short story collection Only the Animals. These three very different works, each with their layers of interwoven stories, voices now in concert, now in conflict, attest to the originality of Dovey’s conceptually complex writing.' (Introduction)

Last amended 7 Nov 2019 08:30:46
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