Upton's Novel 'Krank Fuss' Debuts; Blanchett Was First Reader
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- Andrew Upton has published his debut novel Krank Fuss, framed as a fable written by a WWI veteran named Rudi for his unborn daughter and discovered after her death — a conceit Upton says opened the door to his thoughts about AA Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh as a 'beautiful response to the first world war.'
- Cate Blanchett was Upton's first reader of the full draft, along with Australian director Kip Williams and Upton's eldest son Dashiell — all three told him to 'stop telling people it's weird.'
- Upton, who co-runs film company Dirty Films with Blanchett and lives in East Sussex near Biggin Hill airfield, conceived the book after watching chickens being dumped into a box at a pullet breeder, then weaving in memories of his late father John — an RAF navigator in WWII (an earlier version of the article incorrectly said WWI).
- The novel mixes fable influences with what the source describes as 'literary savagery' — a predatory cat meets a 'spectacularly gruesome end,' a 'repulsive rapist rooster' is killed, and 'blood spurts from decapitated heads of poultry,' while the animals realize they live inside a human construct and turn on each other.
- Upton previously spent 10 years as co-artistic director of the Sydney Theatre Company with Blanchett, adapting Chekhov, Ibsen and other classics — work he credits as sitting 'on my shoulder' when he turned to fiction.
- Krank Fuss is published by Puncher & Wattmann.
Why it matters: The book marks Upton's first published work of prose fiction after decades as a playwright, translator and theater-maker — a debut that, in his own words, 'opened up a doorway to me as an older fellow that I honestly thought had sort of shut,' positioning him as a literary voice rather than only a theatrical adapter working in Blanchett's orbit.
