This unique book on neurocognitive interpretations of Australian literature covers a wide range of analyses by discussing Australian Literary Studies, Aboriginal literary texts, women writers, ethnic writing, bestsellers, neurodivergence fiction, emerging as well as high- profile writers, literary hoaxes and controversies, book culture, and LGBTIQA+ authors, to name a few. It eclectically brings together a wide gamut of cognitive concepts and literary genres at the intersection of Australian literary studies and cognitive literary studies in the first single-author volume of its kind. It takes Australian Literary Studies into the age of neuroawareness and provides new pathways in contemporary criticism.

Jean-François Vernay is the author of five scholarly books, most of which are available in translation or are currently being translated: Water from the Moon: Illusion and Reality in the Works of Australian Novelist Christopher Koch (2007), A Brief Take on the Australian Novel (2016), The Seduction of Fiction: A Plea for Putting Emotions Back into Literary Interpretation (2016), and: La séduction de la fiction (2019). He has also edited several special issues of international academic journals and his 30 odd peer-reviewed articles and chapters have appeared in many countries around the world. His latest monograph, The Rise of the Australian Neurohumanities: Conversations Between Neurocognitive Research and Australian Literature, is an edited volume also available in the Routledge Focus series.