From a new voice in international fiction, a prize-winning collection of stories that cross the world—Africa, London, the West Indies, Australia—and express the global experience "with exquisite sensitivity" (Dave Eggers, author of The Circle).In this collection of award-winning stories, Maxine Beneba Clarke gives voice to the disenfranchised, the lost, and the mistreated. Her stories will challenge you, move you, and change the way you view this complex world we inhabit. Within these pages, 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 war-path 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....

In The Best Australian Stories, acclaimed writer Maxine Beneba Clarke brings together our country's leading literary talents. Herself an award-winning short-story writer, Beneba Clarke selects exceptional stories that resonate with experience and truth, and celebrate the art of storytelling.Previous contributors include Kate Grenville, Tony Birch, David Malouf, Kirsten Tranter, Anna Krien, Georgia Blain, Peter Goldsworthy, Fiona McFarlane, Elizabeth Harrower, Ryan O'Neill and Romy Ash.Maxine Beneba Clarke is an Australian writer of Afro-Caribbean descent. In 2015 her short fiction collection Foreign Soil won the ABIA for Best Literary Fiction and the Indie Award for Best Debut Fiction, and was shortlisted for the Stella Prize. Her critically acclaimed memoir, The Hate Race (2016), was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier's Literary Award, the Indie Award for Non-Fiction and the Stella Prize. She is also the author of a picture book, The...