A Country too Far

One of the central moral issues of our time is the question of asylum seekers, and it's arguably the most controversial subject in Australia today. In this landmark anthology, 27 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 their 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 has published six novels and a collection each of short stories, poems and essays. 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. 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 is a novelist, playwright, and nonfiction author who is best-known for the Booker Prize–winning novel Schindler's Ark, which was adapted into the movie Schindler's List. His other titles include the Penguin Lives biography Abraham Lincoln, American Scoundrel: The Life of the Notorious Civil War General Dan Sickles, and A Commonwealth of Thieves: The Improbable Birth of Australia.