When Michelle de Kretser decided to use her acceptance of the Stella prize in May to speak out about Israel’s invasion of Gaza and the Australian government’s role in the ongoing humanitarian crisis, she admitted the speech might be a “career ender”.

It wasn’t: on Monday, De Kretser collected the $80,000 Prime Minister’s Literary award for fiction for the same book, her eighth novel, Theory & Practice. Theory & Practice by Michelle de Kretser review – what should a novel look like? Read more

As the title suggests, the work tackles the relationship between intent and actions, while masterfully testing readers’ assumptions about autobiography and fiction. Judges praised the novel as “elegant, playful and razor sharp”.

In her acceptance speech on Monday evening in Canberra, De Kretse

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