Winner, Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Fiction, 2018
Longlisted, Indie Book Award for Debut Fiction, 2018
Longlisted, ABIA Literary Fiction Book of the Year, 2018
Longlisted, ABIA Matt Richell Award for New Writer of the Year, 2018
Longlisted, Dobbie Literary Award for a first time published author, 2018
Shortlisted, Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction, 2017
Winner, Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript, 2016
“Melanie Cheng is an astonishingly deft and incisive writer. With economy and elegance, she creates a dazzling mosaic of contemporary life, of how we live now. Hers is a compelling new voice in Australian literature.” — Christos Tsiolkas
“What a wonderful book, a book with bite. These stories have a real edge to them. They are complex without being contrived, humanising, but never sentimental or cloying—and, ultimately, very moving.” — Alice Pung
“The happy surprise of Cheng’s work as a collection lies in her resolute grasp of the absolute normalcy of a culture that not so many years ago was divided and dually suspicious. The census gives us the facts but it takes fiction to make reality three-dimensional.” — Sydney Morning Herald
“The author’s empathetic eye and easy facility with dialogue make the anthology a strong debut, with the longer stories in particular offering breadth and depth…It feels like Cheng has taken a wide sample from the census to craft this inclusive portrait of contemporary Australia.” — Big Issue
HOME 