The Writer's Fugue

What do Celan, Plath, Joyce, Proust, and De Quincy, have in common with writers now in immigration detention prison, specifically, exiled writer Behrouz Boochani marooned in Australian-run Manus "processing centre"? All use what Skilbeck calls the 'fugal modality of writing' to transform trauma of loss into life-saving prose or poetry: bearing witness. In this meticulously researched and explosive book Skilbeck delves into political, social and cultural contexts of oppression of writers by the state in Australia. She uncovers shocking connections between the unlawful immigration of war criminals and fascists from post-WW2 Europe, and the undermining of writers wrongly spied on in Australia, in a corrupt repressive regime that imprisons writers in 'processing centres'. Part 1 deploys a sustained critical fugal analysis of the exiled authors with dialogic exchanges with Boochani, Cheikh Kone, and Mohsen Soltany Zand. Part 1 includes chapters on fugue in music, and how it turned into a diagnosis of dissociative amnesia in modernity. Part 2 comprises five studies of authors of modernism, and postwar writings, on how and why they use dialogic fugue modalities in their significant, inventive, and politically engaged writings.