Emily Bitto, for Reasons to Leave
Emily Bitto is an award-winning writer of fiction, poetry and non- fiction. She has a Masters in Literary Studies and a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Melbourne. Her debut novel, The Strays, won the 2015 Stella Prize. The Strays was published internationally and has been optioned for a television series. Her second novel, Wild Abandon, won the Margaret and Colin Roderick Award and was shortlisted for the ALS Gold Medal. Emily has been teaching for over a decade and is currently a tutor at the Faber Writing Academy.
Reasons to Leave
Reasons to Leave follows a small group of Czechoslovakian migrants who flee their homeland following the Soviet invasion of August 1968, which quashed what came to be known as the Prague Spring. The novel is made up of two parts: the first is set in 1969 and spans the first months of the characters’ new lives in Australia, living in a migrant hostel in Broadmeadows and working in the factories in the surrounding suburbs; the second is set three decades later, after the fall of communism in Czechoslovakia, at the funeral of one of the group. Very different fates have befallen the friends since they migrated. Pavel has become a successful businessman, but his family back home have been heavily persecuted because of his escape and resent him for his success. Irena’s thoroughly ‘Australian’ children and are busy with their lives, and the factory she has worked in for years is about to close. Marek has profited from organised crime, but is estranged from his daughter, who is dating a new migrant from Iran. Now, the death of their friend Roman forces them to reflect on what they have gained, and also lost, in coming to ‘the West.’