Yumna Kassab on Parramatta: A Dictionary of Place and Memory
The following is an excerpt from the introduction of Parramatta: A Dictionary of Place and Memory by Yumna Kassab (Giramondo Publishing, 2026). The book is Kassab’s first work of non-fiction since being named the inaugural Parramatta Laureate in Literature.
It is an assumption of this writer that most people are familiar with the structure of a dictionary. Words are arranged alphabetically and if we do a Venn diagram comparing a dictionary and an encyclopaedia, there will be overlap.
It was my idea that a dictionary could tell the story of a person (me) in connection with a place (Parramatta) with enough flexibility to take in detours, digressions, musings and general quirkiness. I knew at the outset that the entries would be placed under titles and it would be fragmentary in spirit.
While a dictionary is known for its technical and functional parameters, it has been used creatively. For those interested in creative versions, there’s The Book of Imaginary Beings by Jorge Luis Borges and Margarita Guerrero, Nazi Literature in the Americas by Roberto Bolaño, which is not alphabetical at all, and then Léxico de Afinidades by Ida Vitale which I picked up on a 2022 trip to Uruguay and has just appeared in translation by Sean Manning.
Compendium. Lexicon. Encyclopaedia. Dictionary.
My efforts with Parramatta: A Dictionary of Place and Memory are too modest for it to be called an encyclopaedia. I am of the generation that knew the multi-volume encyclopaedia sets that some people had in their homes. I like the concept of a lexicon or compendium which need not be alphabetical, but my intention was to arrange A to Z so a dictionary it was going to be.
As for the presentation of this project. It consists of the full alphabet in this printed book and there is also a selection of letters (C, S, T, W, M, N, O, P) available on the Sydney Review of Books website so that a reading can be experienced a fragment at a time.
Lastly, all writing problems involve the dilemma of deciding when a project is done. I wrote from 1 December 2023 to 1 October 2024. Since then I have thought to add to this dictionary but I have drawn an arbitrary line, and in both a digital and physical form, the dictionary has been sent out to find its destiny in the world.
