Published in 2025
320 pages
Megan Clement is a journalist living in Paris. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Bloomberg, CNN, Al Jazeera, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian Book Review, Crikey and Meanjin, among other publications. Megan edits Impact, a bilingual newsletter of feminist journalism and teaches at the Sorbonne-Nouvelle University. She is the inaugural winner of the Island Magazine Nonfiction Prize.
What is this book about?
A story about family, connection and the distance we will go to be with the ones we love.
In 2020, as the world is closing its borders, journalist Megan Clement races to be with her father, who is dying on the other side of the world. Trapped in hotel quarantine in Melbourne, she reflects on what it means to be a naturalised Australian – both immigrant to and emigrant from her adopted country – and on a life lived between Stoke-on-Trent, Harare, Melbourne, London and Paris.
This is a story about who gets to cross borders, and what Australia’s obsession with its own frontiers means for those on either side. It is a story of a woman trying to shrink the planet through force of will to bring herself closer to the father she loves, as the world begins to grapple with its greatest health crisis in a century. It is about the paths we create from our own desires, not the ones that have been laid out for us.
