Published in 2025
272 pages
Marija Peričić is a writer based in Melbourne. Her first novel, The Lost Pages, won The Australian/Vogel’s Literary Award 2017, and was shortlisted for the 2017 Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction. Marija was named as a Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Australian novelist in 2018 for The Lost Pages. Her short stories, essays and poetry have also appeared in Meanjin, Southerly, Going Down Swinging, and The Big Issue Fiction Edition. She holds a Creative Writing PhD from the University of Melbourne and teaches creative writing workshops.
What is this book about?
A lyrical work that explores the fallibility of memory and asks if we can ever really know the ones we love or ourselves …
Estranged sistes—Eva and Elisabeta Novak—have not spoken since Eva’s young daughter, Gracie, was killed in a road accident. More than a decade later, and long after Eva has moved overseas, Elizabeta calls, insisting that Eva return home.
But when Eva arrives at her sister’s house, she discovers that Elizabeta is dead. Eva finds that she has been appointed the executor of Elizabeta’s estate, and as she undertakes the monumental task of clearing out the house, she comes to know her sister again through the objects and documents that she encounters. Through this process, Eva is forced to reckon with their shared history and the possibility that her mind cannot be trusted.
Foreign Country engages with themes of grief and loss, and the instability of memory. The novel explores the difficulty of coming to terms with conflicting accounts of the past and asks how well we ever really know the ones that we love, or our own past selves.
