The Thinking Woman

(Paperback)

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Description

WINNER of the Australian Book Design Awards 2020
Best Designed Autobiography/Biography/Memoir Nonfiction Cover

Highly Commended for the Victorian Premier's Literary Award 2019 for Non-Fiction

One of the age-old questions of philosophy is what does it mean to live a good life In this extraordinary book, scholar and writer, Julienne van Loon, applies a range of philosophical ideas to her own experience. Van Loon engages with the work of six leading contemporary thinkers and writers Rosi Braidotti, Nancy Holmstrom, Siri Hustvedt, Laura Kipnis, Julia Kristeva and Marina Warner through interrogating and enlivening their ideas on love, play, fear, work, wonder and friendship.

Her journey is intellectual and deeply personal, political and intimate at once. It introduces readers to six extraordinary women whose own deeply thoughtful work has much to offer all of us. They may transform our own views of what it means to live a good life.

'...a knotty, charismatic exploration of the intersection between ideas and lived experience, through six central themes...Van Loon has dared to think about how we might have serious conversations about how and why we live, invited a range of impressive thinkers to the table, and submitted her own experience as a kind of case study for application of the ideas that arise. The result is a surprising and resonant work that cements Julienne van Loon's status as a thinking woman well worth reading and following.' Jo Case,Sydney Morning Herald

Reviews

Here is an absolutely original work that may upend the certainties governing your days and nights. Reader, beware! Christopher Merrill, author of Self-Portrait with Dogwood

Author Bio

Julienne van Loon is the author of three critically acclaimed novels: Road Story, Beneath the Bloodwood Tree and Harmless. She lives in Melbourne, where she holds a Vice Chancellor's Senior Research Fellowship with the writing and publishing program at RMIT University. Julienne's honours include the Australian/Vogel's Award and an appointment as Honorary Fellow in Writing with the University of Iowa. The Thinking Woman is her first work of non-fiction.