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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'One morning, the residents of a coastal small town wake to discover the sea has disappeared, leaving them 'landlocked'. However, the narrator has been seeing visions of this cataclysm for years. Is she a prophet? Does she have a disorder that skews her perception of time (the 'Dyschronia' of the title). Or is she just a liar?
'Mills' novel takes contemporary issues of resource depletion and climate change and welds them to one young woman's migraine-inducing nightmares. Her narrator's prevision anticipates a world where entire communities are left to fend for themselves: economically drained, socially fractured, trapped between a hardscrabble past and an uncertain future.' (Publication summary)
Notes
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Epigraph: Tell the emperor that my hall has fallen to the ground. Phoibos no longer has his house, nor his mantic bay, nor his prophetic spring; the water has dried up. -The Phthia's last oracle at Delphi, 362 AD.
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Other Formats
- Also large print.
- Also dyslexic edition
Works about this Work
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y
At Home with Jennifer Mills
Astrid Edwards
(interviewer),
Melbourne
:
Bad Producer Productions
,
2021
23448370
2021
single work
podcast
interview
'Jennifer Mills is the author of the novels The Airways, Dyschronia, Gone and The Diamond Anchor, as well as a collection of short stories, The Rest Is Weight. In 2019 Dyschronia was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award, Australia’s most prestigious prize for literary fiction, the Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature, and the Aurealis Awards for science fiction.' (Production introduction)
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What I’m Reading
2020
single work
column
— Appears in: Meanjin Online 2020; -
Empathy and the Anthropocene
2020
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Colloquy : Text Theory Critique , December no. 39 2020; 'This article seeks to show how literary texts can expand, challenge, and advance existing understandings of empathy. In this article I discuss Australian author Jennifer Mills' novel, Dyschronia. Through excursions into the thought of Jacques Derrida and Paul Ricoeur I demonstrate how Dyschronia can reconfigure existing ideas about what it means for humans to empathise with nonhuman animals.' (Publication abstract) -
Australian Fiction Is Already Challenging the Idea That Catastrophic Bushfire Is Normal
2020
single work
column
— Appears in: The Guardian Australia , 14 January 2020;'The stories we tell about bushfire are changing. Our writers have been grappling with its link to climate crisis for years'
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Coatal Recall
2019
single work
review
— Appears in: The Adelaide Review , September no. 475 2019; (p. 10)
— Review of Dyschronia 2018 single work novel 'In her Miles Franklin Literary Award shortlisted novel Dyschronia, author Jennifer Mills explores the tension between ecological and industrial transformation in a fictional, but recognisably South Australian, coastal town.' (Introduction)
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Civilisation Faces Tacit Test of Time
2018
single work
review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 27 January 2018; (p. 19)
— Review of Dyschronia 2018 single work novel'Sam Warren wakes one morning to discover that her mother, Ivy, has broken into her house. It’s been years since Sam last saw her. Longer still since her mother walked out, 'saying she needed time, as if time wasn’t everywhere, seeping into every crevice'.' (Introduction)
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[Review] Dyschronia
2018
single work
review
— Appears in: Aurealis , no. 109 2018;
— Review of Dyschronia 2018 single work novel -
Of Jennifer Mills, Dyschronia
2018
single work
review
— Appears in: Long Paddock , vol. 77 no. 3 2018;
— Review of Dyschronia 2018 single work novel'Reading this book transported me to the days when I read fiction before studying it, under tables at school, in the library, on the porch smoking cigarettes while my parents were sleeping, wondering how surreal yet possible all these fictional worlds seemed. I thought about this moment in my life while reading Dyschronia (2018) simply because devoting one’s life to learning how to write inevitably jeopardises the sense of mystery that one initially found alluring.' (Introduction)
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Remembering the Future
2018
single work
review
— Appears in: TEXT : Journal of Writing and Writing Courses , October vol. 22 no. 2 2018;
— Review of Dyschronia 2018 single work novel'If the literary technique of ‘defamiliarisation’ is the usual means through which writers jolt people into seeing the world anew, how does a dystopian novelist shock us into seeing the environmental extremities of today, when ‘extremes’ are increasingly the norm? Furthermore, how can such a writer hope to contribute something original to our long tradition of dystopian fiction, and its rapidly growing sub-genre of ‘Cli-Fi’[1]? Jennifer Mills has taken on these challenges with her new novel, Dyschronia. This striking title refers to the novel’s structural and thematic preoccupation with temporal disorder, while cleverly alluding to both the novel’s genre and to the feeling of ‘dysphoria’ experienced by its protagonist, Sam (66) – that deep sense of ‘unease’ which provokes, and should be provoked by, dystopian stories.' (Introduction)
-
Coatal Recall
2019
single work
review
— Appears in: The Adelaide Review , September no. 475 2019; (p. 10)
— Review of Dyschronia 2018 single work novel 'In her Miles Franklin Literary Award shortlisted novel Dyschronia, author Jennifer Mills explores the tension between ecological and industrial transformation in a fictional, but recognisably South Australian, coastal town.' (Introduction) -
Jennifer Mills : Dyschronia
2018
single work
column
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 27 January - 2 February 2018;'In our era of climate change, prophecies about our future are commonplace. Scientists are our key prophets nowadays – though they are often repudiated or betrayed, like the religious prophets of old – but writers also increasingly offer their prognostications. Dyschronia, the third novel by the Australian writer Jennifer Mills, is another contribution to the future-oriented genre of cli-fi or climate-change fiction. Future gazing is also thematised by Mills’ novel.' (Introduction)
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'A Crack in Its Earth'
2018
single work
essay
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , March no. 399 2018; (p. 38)'Recent years have seen the literary novel begin to mutate, its boundaries and subject matter evolving in new and sometimes surprising directions as it attempts to accommodate the increasing weirdness of the world we inhabit.' (Introduction)
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Layers of Now : Jennifer Mills’ Dyschronia
2018
single work
essay
— Appears in: Kill Your Darlings [Online] , February 2018;'A looping, surrealist vision of a small town wracked by climate change lays bare our collective myopia about the future.'
-
y
Jennifer Mills
Astrid Edwards
(interviewer),
Melbourne
:
Bad Producer Productions
,
2018
14753561
2018
single work
interview
'In this interview, Jennifer discusses her writing process, reflects on her different approaches to fiction and non-fiction, and offers advice to emerging writers who are pitching to literary journals.' (Introduction)
-
Climate Change Was so Last Year : Writers’ Festivals and the Great Derangement
2018
single work
essay
— Appears in: Overland [Online] , September 2018;'Every other day, it seems, a new controversy erupts around the programming decisions of one or another of Australia’s ever-proliferating literary festivals. If the object of outrage is not an unrepresentative panel discussion, it’s a politically contentious keynote, or else a disastrous clash between ill-suited speakers. Whatever the specifics, the regularity with which such brouhahas flare up speaks to our anxieties about what purpose literary festivals serve.' (Introduction)
Awards
- 2020 shortlisted Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature — Award for Fiction
- 2019 shortlisted Miles Franklin Literary Award
- 2018 shortlisted Aurealis Awards for Excellence in Australian Speculative Fiction — Science Fiction Division — Novel