Courage
A compelling new work from the talented Maria Tumarkin, Courage looks for courage outside of the extremes of violence, endurance and fear, tracking it across cultural and historical divides to its less spectacular and deeper forms.
Opinion
'Courage proves yet again that Maria Tumarkin is a fine writer-satirical, lyrical, moving and always reflective. She is often provocative but the way she combines disciplined intensity with unaffected charm engages the reader in discussion rather than polemic. Like all real thinkers she ploughs her own furrow across terrains of the greatest human significance, planting seeds that will nourish reflection in people of many kinds.'
-RAIMOND GAITA
"Tumarkin writes beautifully, too, but rather than fencing her readers in, she guides us into fields we might not have otherwise found and the encourages us to wander. [. . .] the situations Tumarkin describes, in her life and the lives of others, linger after the book is closed."
Jeff Sparrow, The Age, 06/10/2007
About this Title
'People care desperately about courage. For once, I am one of the people. Do you want to know what it means to care desperately? It means that I am prepared to give up dignity, talent and generosity for the attribute of courage. When I fantasise about what people will say after my death, I know what I want them to recall-whatever her fl aws (too numerous to mention), she certainly had guts. Yet the courage I conjure up in my fantasies exists outside of the extremes of violence, endurance and fear. It is not primarily a virtuous ideal or an idea, but rather an expression of the human spirit-messy, explosive and morally ambivalent.'
Maria Tumarkin's view of courage contains no dead military heroes. Young, female, an immigrant from the crumbling Soviet states, she mines her own remarkable life story to produce a meditation on the courage we need to live our everyday lives. A hybrid of memoir and philosophy, of experience and ideas, Courage is a hugely entertaining and provocative read from a writer of startling talent.
Listen to Maria Tumarkin on the ABC's conversation hour (11 September) www.abc.net.au
About the Author
Maria Tumarkin is the author of Traumascapes (MUP), which was shortlisted in the prize for a fi rst book of history in the 2006 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards. She has a PhD from the University of Melbourne; her essays and reviews appear frequently in The Age, The Australian, The Monthly and other publications. Maria lives in Melbourne with her husband and two children.
Add to Shopping Basket
How to buy MUP titles