Judges’ Report

Cher Tan delivers the reader the mirror held up to society and shatters it with a hammer. In this riot of essays about punk, the internet and the precarity of existence under capitalism’s yoke, Tan writes with an extraordinary regard to the thinkers who have shaped the ages, before and now, and places them on the podium next to ideas and one-liners from her friends and loved ones about life, labour, and the Somerton Man. It is not accidental that Tan, whose Peripathetic is subtitled ‘notes on (un)belonging’, manages to evoke a cohesive whole that belongs together even as its constituent parts veer comically, and violently, into the outrageous and absurd. We are yeeted into existence, Tan writes, and she gathers the linguistic and cultural ephemera of our moment into this breathtaking account of its fractious manifestations. Funny and strange and breathing so fast, Peripathetic is a remarkable work. Tan has produced an utterly unique entry in Australian letters.