AUSTRALIA DAY

AUSTRALIA DAY was the winner of the prestigious Victorian Premier's Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript in 2016, the same award won by international bestsellers The Rosie Project and The Dry by Jane Harper.

Melanie Cheng's writing has a chameleon-like quality, combining an insider's intimate knowledge of the culture she describes with an outsider's clear-eyed objectivity. The people she writes about are young, old, rich, poor, married, widowed, Chinese, Lebanese, Christian, Muslim. What they have in common - no matter where they come from - is the desire we all share to feel that we belong.

The stories explore universal themes of love, loss, family and identity, while at the same time asking crucial questions about the possibility of human connection in a globalised world. Highly accessible and emotionally engaging, Melanie Cheng's work will appeal to readers of Anne Tyler, Ruth Ozeki and Nam Le.

Melanie Cheng is a writer and general practitioner. Of Chinese-Australian heritage, she grew up in Hong Kong but now lives in Melbourne