Australian Fugue: The Antipode Room

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‘Know thyself’ is a Greek proverb. But what does it mean? Something is missing. But she can’t think what it is. Mysterious art dealer Countess Ruby is jailed in Australia for the traumatic murder she cannot recall. In her adopted, art-world high society life in London, acting the part and role-playing replaced authenticity. Ruby, amnesiac, kept up appearances. Then she and husband Sir Hugo Rivers go to Australia, to collect art. She returns to encounter a life forgotten. A triangular love affair, Margarita and Raymond, troubled artist; a disappeared friend, lover, daughter. What is the significance of the woman violinist playing Bach’s Contrapunctus 14 haunting her? Who did what?

Ruth Skilbeck's novel explores silencing, trauma, and identity in postcolonial family life, after-effects of hidden histories and mysteries of self in denial, how one appears to self and others, and the need to go beyond disguise, deception, and reinvention, to find truths of lost self-identity.

When is forgetting salve and when is it denial? To forget and move on you need first to remember. In this compelling and original novel, she explores the need to remember and acknowledge the past in order to know truths of identity, lay ghosts, and seek a deeper understanding through the process of art and writing, and justice.