It is difficult to describe what Yumna Kassab’s The Theory of Everything is, such is its form-bending structure. It may be most aptly described as a collection of five short stories or novellas, although ‘Silver’ reads as three stories and other parts of the collection are fragmentary and poetic, offering a series of thoughtful vignettes on a theme.
Unweighted by conventional form, much of the collection is also unweighted by specific senses of place, and even often by character names. In ‘Silver’, the narrator is an unnamed hotel worker in an unnamed hotel, voyeuristically speculating on the life of a famous (and named), long-term hotel guest. The anonymity of things gives the stories a surreal quality, not unlike the surrealist/magical realist writers such as s Jorge Luis Borges and Isabel Allende that Kassab recommends in her fourth wall-breaking interlude ‘Triggers’.
The function of a name is further explored in ‘The Vampire at the End of the World’, where the narrator, again nameless, is told the name of the vampire they speak with, but it is merely ‘noise and made no sense’. “A word,” the vampire explains, “designed to slip through the mind so nothing will hold it.” It is at this juncture that the narrator is expressing frustration towards the pressure to constantly create content, to summarise the self with labels, ‘of fitting everything into the structure, of bolting it down so completely…’ In this conversation and, indeed, through The Theory of Everything, the reader is consistently reminded of this trade-off. Structure and labels make things easier to grasp; yet they can also be limiting, frustrating, unsettling and even deadly.
The deadliness of categorisation is made gut-wrenchingly clear in ‘Gender’, which opens with a description of parents burying a baby alive, nameless, because she was born a girl. Other gendered harms, including more murders, are explored through a series of vignettes, set through different unnamed times and places.
Even in scenarios that do not have life-and-death stakes and even in the face of immense privilege, we see characters who are dealing with frustrations and unhappiness. A hugely successful sportsman, Ibrahim, feels controlled by his club and sponsors. He thinks the media overanalyses his wife knitting in the stands and eventually he feels unable to rise from bed.
In another story, a young man, Jamel, moves abroad because of ‘one long ache to escape’. Unlike his parents, who were dispossessed of their home, ‘there was no war at his back, no disaster, no trauma from which this new city was an escape’. The city he escapes from is named – Sydney. As he decides to leave, he notices himself ‘shedding: his possessions, his past, his name, the core of his identity’. His family and heritage feel too weighty and though he is ‘included’ in Australian society, the price feels weighty too, while the feeling is of emptiness. ‘In return for his inclusion, he was to nod when told, speak when ordered, to voice the opinions he had been taught. In short, his life was to be an echo of their life.’ The trade-off no longer seems worthwhile.
Read: Exhibition: World Press Photo Exhibition, State Library of NSW
The Theory of Everything is not an easy read. Cast in an experimental mode and form, it makes the reader work, and casts our attention to different places and people at unpredictable intervals. It’s in communication with many other writers, but it is still very much its own thing. You’re rewarded with a highly stimulating set of ideas about power and discontent.
The Theory of Everything, Yumna Kassab
Publisher: Ultimo Press
ISBN: 9781761153327
Format: Paperback
Pages304pp
Release date: March 2025
RRP: $34.99
