A Country Too Far

Description

One of the central moral issues of our time is the question of asylum seekers, arguably the most controversial subject in Australia today. In this landmark anthology, twenty-seven of Australia's finest writers have focused their intelligence and creativity on the theme, confirming that the experience of seeking asylum - the journeys of escape from death, starvation, poverty or terror to an imagined paradise - is deeply embedded in our culture and personal histories. A tour de force of stunning fiction, memoir, poetry and essays. A Country Too Far is by turns thoughtful, fierce, evocative and lyrical, and always extraordinary powerful.

Rosie Scott is an internationally published and award-winning writer who has published six novels and a collection each of short stories, poems and essays. Her play was the basis for a film which won several international awards. She and Thomas Keneally co-edited a PEN anthology of writers in detention, earning them a nomination for the Human Rights Medal and helping to gain PEN the Community Human Rights Award. She was appointed permanent member of the Council of Australian Society of Authors, is a recipient of the Sydney PEN Award and a Lifetime Member of PEN. She is a co-founder of Women for Wik. In 2012 she was nominated as one of the 100 most influential people in Sydney in Educationa-afor her mentoring, teaching and the work she has done in public education about asylum seekers. Her novel Faith Singer was on the list of 50 Essential Reads by Contemporary Authors compiled by the Orange Prize committee, the Guardian and the Hay Festival. Thomas Keneally was born in 1935 and his first novel was published in 1964. Since then he has written a considerable number of novels and non-fiction works. His novels include The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, Schindler's List and The People's Train. He has won the Miles Franklin Award, the Booker Prize, the Los Angeles Times Prize, the Mondello International Prize and has been made a Literary Lion of the New York Public Library, a Fellow of the American Academy, recipient of the University of California gold medal, and is now the subject of a 55 cent Australian stamp. He has held various academic posts in the United States, but lives in Sydney.