Personal and political

‘The personal is political’ is an axiom that has become ubiquitous. Normally used within the context of feminist activism, in Yumna Kassab’s latest novel – for which it serves as the epigraph – it is a reminder of the human sacrifice of war and how every part of a civilian’s life reflects its surroundings.

Politica manages to be at once specific and incredibly vague. It concerns itself with the lives of ordinary people during times of war and conflict, examining how these political circumstances have ripple effects in everyday lives. In this way, it is very much a book of the moment, as our social media and news feeds are filled with images of despair. What might a day in any of these people’s lives look like? And even if war is not immediately physically present, how is it felt? Yet there is a certain mutedness to Politica. Like Kassab’s previous works – Australiana (2022), The House of Youssef (2019), and the Miles Franklin-nominated The Lovers (2022) – it is ambitious, experimental, and stylised, written in vignettes, aphorisms, fragments, fables, and poems in short chapters. Its structure is rather like a collage or mosaic, with all its various pieces swimming around a thematic core – what the Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk has called a ‘constellation novel’.