Axiomatic is a 2018 book by Maria Tumarkin. It was published in Australia by Brow Books and in the United States by Transit Books.[1][2] The book is a work of creative non-fiction, structured as a collection of five essays that explore five different "axioms" or common sayings.[3] It was the winner of the 2020 Windham-Campbell Prize for Non-Fiction, and was named on the shortlists for the 2019 Stella Prize and Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction.[4][5][6]
Axiomatic is structured as a collection of five essays exploring five axioms: time heals all wounds, those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it, history repeats itself, 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.[3]
Reception
Axiomatic was positively received by reviewers. The book was named one of the ten best books of 2019 by The New Yorker and received a starred review in Publishers Weekly.[7][8] A review in The Saturday Paper likened Tumarkin to Australian author Helen Garner and Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexievich, writing that the work was a remarkable book filled with risks.[9] In Australian Book Review, Darius Sepehri wrote that the book was filled with a "freewheeling energy", but that its unconventional style sometimes jarred with its emotional affect.[10] In The Australian, Liam Pieper wrote that Tumarkin's "narrative pyrotechnics complement the unabashed power and beauty of the writing — intense, angry, empathetic, relentless", concluding that Tumarkin was "simply operating on a higher level to the rest of us".[3] A review in Kirkus Review wrote that Tumarkin's writing was reminiscent of that of Joan Didion, and concluded that the book "asks deep, difficult questions and refuses to settle for easy answers".[11]
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