Christine Harris’s first collection of short stories, Outer Face (1992), was an instant bestseller and her second and third collections, Buried Secrets (1993) and Party Animals (1995), have established her as one of Australia’s leading writers of short stories for young adults.

Strike! (1994), set on the Australian waterfront of 1928, was her first novel but it was in her second, Baptism of Fire (1996), dealing with 19th century Fiji, that she began to explore in depth the implications of cultural contact. Christine takes this subject even further in her latest collection of short stories, Fortune Cookies, lifting aside the familiar imagery of places like China, Vietnam, Singapore, Korea, the Philippines, Bali and Australia and allowing us to share the reality of lives that are at best only half understood. In her brilliant new novel, Foreign Devil (1999), she shares startling insights into a China that few people know about. An outstanding achievement, this is Christine’s best novel yet.