Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: Foreign Soil

Author: Maxine Beneba Clarke

Narrator: Maxine Beneba Clarke

Format: Unabridged

Length: 7 hrs and 33 mins

Language: English

Release date: 02-16-16

Publisher: Hachette Australia Audio

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary

Publisher's Summary:

In this collection of award-winning stories, Melbourne writer Maxine Beneba Clarke has given a voice to the disenfranchised, the lost, the downtrodden and the mistreated. It will challenge you; it will have you by the heartstrings. This is contemporary fiction at its finest.

In Melbourne's western suburbs, in a dilapidated block of flats overhanging the rattling Footscray train lines, a young black mother is working on a collection of stories. The book is called Foreign Soil.

Inside its covers, a desperate asylum seeker is pacing the hallways of Sydney's notorious Villawood detention centre, a seven-year-old Sudanese boy has found solace in a patchwork bike, an enraged black militant is on the warpath through the rebel squats of 1960s Brixton, a Mississippi housewife decides to make the ultimate sacrifice to save her son from small-town ignorance, a young woman leaves rural Jamaica in search of her destiny, and a Sydney schoolgirl loses her way.

The young mother keeps writing; the rejection letters keep arriving....

Winner: Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Novelist 2015. Literary Fiction of the Year, Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIA) 2015. Debut Fiction, Indie Book Awards 2015. Victorian Premier's Unpublished Manuscript Award 2013. Shortlisted: The Stella Prize 2015. UTS Glenda Adams Debut Fiction, NSW Premier's Literary Awards 2015. ABIA Matt Richell Award for New Writers 2015. Victorian Premier's Literary Award 2015. Longlisted for the Dobbie Literary Award 2015.

Critic Reviews:

"An assured and skilful debut." (Weekend Australian)

"Foreign Soil is a collection of outstanding literary quality and promise. Clarke is a confident and highly skilled writer." (Hannah Kent, best-selling author of Burial Rites)

"Maxine Beneba Clarke is a powerful and fearless storyteller, and this collection - written with exquisite sensitivity and yet uncompromising - will stay with you with the force of elemental truth. Clarke is the real deal, and will, if we're lucky, be an essential voice in world literature for years to come." (Dave Eggers, best-selling author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and many more)

"One of the most compelling voices in Australian poetry this decade." (Overland)

Members Reviews:

Great book, highly recommended

Really enjoyed this book, a great find. I look forward to Maxine's future writings!

Five Stars

A voice that must be heard!

Tough but essential reading to understand suffering of refugees

These short stories show such a sensitive insight into the often horrendous trauma that refugees have experienced before arriving in their new country of residence. As well, it demonstrates the difficult adjustment they have to make in the new society with underlying racism, not understanding the culture, etc.

It is essential reading for those who do not support their country in accepting refugees especially those arriving by boat and 'jumping the queue'.

This is a beautifully written collection of short stories that felt familiar even ...

This is a beautifully written collection of short stories that felt familiar even if the characters lived completely different lives from me.

Beneba Clarke is one of those storytellers who reels you in and won't let go.