Susan Johnson

Maria Tamarkin, speaking there with Richard Feidler on ABC's Conversations.

And it's a really lovely interview and it's worth listening to the whole thing.

Maria Dushaw, as you listen to Maria Tamarkin talking, can you hear that accented English as you read her book, Axiomatic?

It is an unusual structure and we're cheating a bit because we are supposed to talk about fiction on this show, but it feels like she's a fiction writer, not quite an essay writer, but she's also a writer dealing with ideas.

And also it's a book that's full of other books, isn't it?

We also have great characters who are fleshed out and it feels as though we walk through the pages with them.

There's a woman called Vanda who is a lawyer and

who works in the justice system and works with very marginalised people.

And with a character like that, I mean, Maria is there interacting with her, but it also feels very much like we're actually grappling with big ethical and moral questions.

Yeah.

are issues in this book as they are in Rachel Cusk's Kudos.

And possibly because I was reading them next to each other, I started to see it as a bit of a dialogue.

But there's a bit more colour.

There's a bit more passion.

The emotions are there on the page, I think, a bit more explicitly with Maria.

And it comes through really interestingly, I think, in Vera's story.

So Vera is a Holocaust survivor.

And again, the making of this story has taken years and years and years.

And she combines the sort of banality of everyday, everydayness with these big picture thinking.

And she's walking down the street with Vera.