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Axiomatic

by Maria Tumarkin
$9.90
Compare to estimated retail price: S$26.00  

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Axiomatic
Axiomatic

For thinkers haunted by history’s living force

This is the kind of book that lingers because it doesn’t just discuss the past, it shows how it breathes inside everyday life. Maria Tumarkin blends essay, reportage, memory and philosophy in a way that feels intimate and intellectually electric at once. If you like books that challenge easy truths and make you see familiar ideas differently, this will feel sharp, unsettling and deeply rewarding.

  • National Book Critics Circle Award Nominee for Criticism (2019)
  • The Stella Prize Nominee for Shortlist (2019)
Note: While we do our best to ensure the accuracy of cover images, ISBNs may at times be reused for different editions of the same title which may hence appear as a different cover.
Just Arrived

Axiomatic

by Maria Tumarkin
$9.90
Compare to estimated retail price: S$26.00  

The item you've got your eye on is secondhand. You probably already know that, but just in case!

The estimated retail price shown next to any listed item represents the first-hand prices we've seen elsewhere, or the estimated original retail price of a comparable item of the same quality, construction and material offered elsewhere in new condition.

Condition guide

Book Condition Guide

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*Books may be missing bundle media (e.g. CD, e-book code), if included.

 

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ISBN: 9781761043581
Authors: Maria Tumarkin
Publisher: Penguin Random House Australia
Date of Publication: 2021-05-04
Format: Paperback
Related Collections: Creative Nonfiction, History, Biographies & Memoirs
Related Topics: Essays, Mental Health, Memoir
Goodreads rating: 4.08
(rated by 1349 readers)

Description

The past shapes the present—they teach us that in schools and universities. This past cannot be visited like an ageing aunt. It doesn’t live in little zoo enclosures. Half the time, this past is nothing less than the beating heart of the present. So, how to speak of the searing, unpindownable power that the past—ours, our family’s, our culture’s—wields in the present? Stories are not enough, even though they are essential. And books about history, books of psychology—the best of them take us closer, but still not close enough. Maria Tumarkin's Axiomatic is a boundary-shifting fusion of thinking, storytelling, reportage and meditation. It takes as its starting point five axioms: ‘Time Heals All Wounds’; ‘History Repeats Itself’; ‘Those Who Forget the Past are Condemned to Repeat It’; ‘Give Me a Child Before the Age of Seven and I Will Show You the Woman’; and ‘You Can’t Enter The Same River Twice.’ These beliefs—or intuitions—about the role the past plays in our present are often evoked as if they are timeless and self-evident truths. It is precisely because they are neither, yet still we are persuaded by them, that they tell us a great deal about the forces that shape our culture and the way we live.
 

For thinkers haunted by history’s living force

This is the kind of book that lingers because it doesn’t just discuss the past, it shows how it breathes inside everyday life. Maria Tumarkin blends essay, reportage, memory and philosophy in a way that feels intimate and intellectually electric at once. If you like books that challenge easy truths and make you see familiar ideas differently, this will feel sharp, unsettling and deeply rewarding.

  • National Book Critics Circle Award Nominee for Criticism (2019)
  • The Stella Prize Nominee for Shortlist (2019)
Note: While we do our best to ensure the accuracy of cover images, ISBNs may at times be reused for different editions of the same title which may hence appear as a different cover.