Axiomatic

How to speak of the searing, unpindownable power that the past—ours, our family’s, our culture’s—wields in the present?

In five sections, Maria Tumarkin’s Axiomatic tells true and intimate stories of a community dealing with the extended aftermath of a suicide, a grandmother’s quest to kidnap her grandson to keep him safe, one community lawyer’s battle inside and against the justice system, the effects of multigenerational trauma, and the history of the author’s longest friendship. In writing that is inventive, bold, and generous, Axiomatic introduces an unforgettable voice.

“Nobody can write like Maria Tumarkin: she charges headlong into the worst and best of us, with an iron refusal to soften or decorate; sentences bare of artifice, stripped back to the bone, to the nerve; fired by raging grief and love.”

—Helen Garner

“A work of great power and beauty.”

—Pankaj Mishra

“An absolutely life-changing book.”

—Helen Withycombe