What does the ‘avant-garde’ look like today? Two new novels give very different answers
Wassily Kandinsky -- Inner Alliance (1929) Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons Giada Scodellaro’s Ruins, Child and Anna Poletti’s Hello, World? are very different books. Scodellaro won the 2024 Novel Prize ; her book stitches together a history of Black feminist poetry, theory and prose. Poletti’s novel is a work of queer erotic introspection, investigating the limits of domination and submission. There’s not much to connect them in terms of style, theme or ambition. If ther
Two recently published Australian novels—Giada Scodellaro's 'Ruins, Child' and Anna Poletti's 'Hello, World?'—offer contrasting visions of contemporary experimental fiction. Scodellaro's work, which won the 2024 Novel Prize, weaves together Black feminist literary history and theory, while Poletti's novel explores queer sexuality and power dynamics through the story of an academic navigating a dominant-submissive relationship. Despite their thematic differences, both books reject traditional narrative structures in favor of fragmented, non-linear compositions. Rather than pursuing the revolutionary ambitions historically associated with avant-garde art, these novels focus on themes of survival, care, and what the author calls 'political melancholy.' Their emergence raises questions about what experimental literature means in contemporary culture.
These novels represent a significant shift in how avant-garde fiction operates today, moving away from utopian visions toward introspective explorations of personal and political complexity.
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