Shortlisted for the 2018 Stella Prize
Shortlisted for the 2017 Aurealis Awards
'One of the most radical and insightful writers working in Australian letters today...Just read this. You won't regret it.' Overland
Some time in the near future, university lecturer Caspar receives a gift from a former student called Liv: a memory stick containing a virtual narrative. Hooked up to a virtual reality bodysuit, he becomes immersed in the experience of their past sexual relationship. But this time it is her experience. What was for him an erotic interlude, resonant with the thrill of seduction, was very different for her—and when he has lived it, he will understand how.
Later...
A convicted paedophile recruited to Liv's experiment in collective consciousness discovers a way to escape from his own desolation.
A synthetic boy, designed by Liv's team to 'love' men who desire adolescents, begins to question the terms of his existence.
L, in transition to a state beyond gender, befriends Liv, in transition to a state beyond age.
Liv herself has finally transcended the corporeal—but there is still the problem of love.
An Uncertain Grace is a novel in five parts by one of Australia's most inventive and provocative writers. Moving, thoughtful, sometimes playful, it is about who we are—our best and worst selves, our innermost selves—and who we might become.
I know him. I recognise him from the other world, the real world. It is me of course, this man. In the other world I see him smiling at me in the mirror, catch glimpses of him as I walk past shop windows, see him in photographs.
Me. Of course it is me.
And I am her. I am Liv. And this is my room and it is his room and he, I, put my hand up my, her, skirt. I push the cotton aside with his finger and it hurts.
Krissy Kneen is the award winning author of the memoir Affection, the novels Steeplechase, Triptych, The Adventures of Holly White and the Incredible Sex Machine, and the Thomas Shapcott Award winning poetry collection Eating My Grandmother. They have written and directed broadcast documentaries for SBS and ABC television.
'Haunting and wonderful.' My Cup and Chaucer
'Innovative and provocative...a virtual reality suit, sex, life, and the technological postponement of death.' Australian
'An Uncertain Grace is a highly provocative read that masterfully offers thoughtful speculation on the future of technology, memory and sexuality.' Books + Publishing
'It's a rare book that seems to drift like smoke away from the printed page to rewrite the physical world...[Kneen] wants us to strip naked and be transformed.' Melbourne Review of Books
'Kneen's descriptive prose is gorgeous; her stories are clever and interesting: her speculation on the future state is, despite the jellyfish, not the least bit whacky, but instead, quite credible...creative, a bit provocative and definitely thought-provoking.' BookMooch
'This novel questions what it will mean to be human when we are able to be more than human—to be plural, genderless, or living the experiences of someone else through a digital narrative. With An Uncertain Grace, Kneen has given us something that is at once intensely affecting, entertaining, and hugely fascinating.' Readings
'Folding sensitive threads of erotica into mind-bending speculative fiction, Krissy Kneen's latest novel is an ambitious genre hybrid that addresses both morality and mortality from...
