'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 of the dispossessed, bringing a whole new perspective of depth and truthfulness to what has become a fraught, distorted war of words. This anthology confirms that the experience of seeking asylum – the journeys of escape from death, starvation, poverty or terror to an imagined paradise – is part of the Australian mindset and deeply embedded in our culture and personal histories.
'A Country Too Far is a tour de force of stunning fiction, memoir, poetry and essays. Edited by award-winning writers Rosie Scott and Tom Keneally, and featuring contributors including Anna Funder, Christos Tsiolkas, Elliot Perlman, Gail Jones, Raimond Gaita, Les Murray, Rodney Hall and Geraldine Brooks, this rich anthology is by turns thoughtful, fierce, evocative, lyrical and moving, and always extraordinarily powerful.
'A Country Too Far' makes an indispensable contribution to the national debate.' (Publisher's blurb)
In this introduction, Rosie Scott discuss the ideas and concepts behind the publication of A Country Too Far.
'This essay proposes a new way of thinking about asylum and refugees by bringing the contemporary discourse of forced displacement into conversation with that of the transnational mobility of today’s financial elites. It does so with respect to the Australian context and the affective registers of xenophobia and antiracism routinely exploited in public debates not only on boat people and asylum, but also on immigration to Australia at large. Thus, the essay responds to calls in the fields of migration studies, critical theory, and economic geography for a closer examination of the socioeconomic inequalities produced by a neoliberalism fast transforming national economies and compelling, or enticing, people all over the world to leave their homelands. Since such inequalities are currently receiving keenest attention in the popular media, it is to these that this essay turns first, with the aim to cast light on the argumentative impasses and ethical dilemmas which the task of chronicling the extravagant lifestyles of super-rich migrants poses. For ways to resolve these, it then moves to literary fiction, notably the novels Birds of Passage (1983) by Brian Castro and The Ancestor Game (1992) by Alex Miller, exploring how they displace the popular narrative of Asian invasion by situating contemporary immigration from Asia to Australia in a wider historical context and returning to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to tell the stories of wealthy Chinese families forcing their dependants to emigrate to Australia. The final section of the essay relates Miller and Castro’s appraisals of the grim legacy of these first engineers of forced migration from Asia to Australia to more recent literary protests by Geraldine Brooks, Raimond Gaita, Stephanie Johnson, Tom Keneally, and Kim Scott against the Australian nation-state’s denial of its obligation to grant asylum to refugees.' (Publication abstract)
In this introduction, Rosie Scott discuss the ideas and concepts behind the publication of A Country Too Far.
Tony Simoes da Silva writes: 'I explore how at times well-intentioned work is undermined by the very knowledge it seeks to create, and by the vocabulary in which it aims to do so. I have in mind in this instance a recent anthology edited by well-known Australian authors Thomas Keneally and Rosie Scott, A Country Too Far (2013). As I aim to show in a discussion of selected texts, the book is a significant example of the ways in which a desire to have an impact and the best of intentions do not always have the intended outcome' (66).
'This essay proposes a new way of thinking about asylum and refugees by bringing the contemporary discourse of forced displacement into conversation with that of the transnational mobility of today’s financial elites. It does so with respect to the Australian context and the affective registers of xenophobia and antiracism routinely exploited in public debates not only on boat people and asylum, but also on immigration to Australia at large. Thus, the essay responds to calls in the fields of migration studies, critical theory, and economic geography for a closer examination of the socioeconomic inequalities produced by a neoliberalism fast transforming national economies and compelling, or enticing, people all over the world to leave their homelands. Since such inequalities are currently receiving keenest attention in the popular media, it is to these that this essay turns first, with the aim to cast light on the argumentative impasses and ethical dilemmas which the task of chronicling the extravagant lifestyles of super-rich migrants poses. For ways to resolve these, it then moves to literary fiction, notably the novels Birds of Passage (1983) by Brian Castro and The Ancestor Game (1992) by Alex Miller, exploring how they displace the popular narrative of Asian invasion by situating contemporary immigration from Asia to Australia in a wider historical context and returning to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to tell the stories of wealthy Chinese families forcing their dependants to emigrate to Australia. The final section of the essay relates Miller and Castro’s appraisals of the grim legacy of these first engineers of forced migration from Asia to Australia to more recent literary protests by Geraldine Brooks, Raimond Gaita, Stephanie Johnson, Tom Keneally, and Kim Scott against the Australian nation-state’s denial of its obligation to grant asylum to refugees.' (Publication abstract)
