The Evan Dara Affinity

In a June 2026 roundup for The Conversation, literary journalist James Ley asked seven Australian literary scholars to nominate their favorite underappreciated book. Emmett Stinson, Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing and English at Edith Cowan University, chose Evan Dara’s The Lost Scrapbook.

Stinson places the novel squarely alongside the major maximalist works of the 1990s, naming Infinite Jest, Underworld, and Mason & Dixon as its peer group, and argues that it belongs among them despite having reached only a fraction of their readership. He traces that gap in part to the book’s publication history with FC2 and in part to the enduring anonymity of Evan Dara.

He offers a sketch of the novel’s formal architecture: the mid-sentence transitions between voices, the disorienting montage of the early chapters, and the shift to a collective chorus in the final section. Stinson writes:

The Lost Scrapbook is complex and difficult, while also being deeply human and emotionally satisfying. It fell out of print for nearly 14 years, but Dara began self-publishing through Aurora in 2008 and it is now more widely available. It is one of the most singular novels of the last 30 years; it deserves a wider readership, particularly among fans of the experimental novel.

The full article is available at The Conversation: [LINK]