Australia Day

Australia Day is a collection of stories by debut author Melanie Cheng. 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.

Melanie Cheng is a writer and general practitioner. Of Chinese-Australian heritage, she was born in Adelaide, grew up in Hong Kong and now lives in Melbourne. In 2016 she won the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript. Australia Day is her first book.

All of her characters—a diverse cast of different races and faiths—are searching for connection or a sense of belonging, and coming up short. Despite its title the focus of this collection is not explicitly on that increasingly controversial public holiday. Rather, it is on the struggles, internal and external, that occur when people from different backgrounds meet by chance or are brought together…

Australia Day is a bittersweet, beautifully crafted collection.

Australia Day is an absorbing panorama of contemporary Australia…These are 14 powerfully perceptive stories, written with love, humour, realism, and a distinct edginess. While the terrain covered might be familiar, Cheng's take on our treasured multiculturalism feels fresh… It's necessary reading, not only because it's a microcosm of who we are, but because each story is a gem, and a joy to behold.

A sumptuous collection of fourteen short stories, which are disparate but with modern Australia or Australians at their heart, exploring issues of racism, infidelity, grief, parenthood, children and ageing...they are heartfelt and Melbourne-based Cheng paints the characters beautifully.