Desire Paths
A story about family, connection and the distance we will go to be with the ones we love.
In 2020, as the world is closing its borders, journalist Megan Clement races to be with her father, who is dying on the other side of the world. Trapped in hotel quarantine in Melbourne, she reflects on what it means to be a naturalised Australian – both immigrant to and emigrant from her adopted country – and on a life lived between Stoke-on-Trent, Harare, Melbourne, London and Paris.
This is a story about who gets to cross borders, and what Australia’s obsession with its own frontiers means for those on either side. It is a story of a woman trying to shrink the planet through force of will to bring herself closer to the father she loves, as the world begins to grapple with its greatest health crisis in a century. It is about the paths we create from our own desires, not the ones that have been laid out for us.
About the Author
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Megan Clement is a journalist living in Paris. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Bloomberg, CNN, Al Jazeera, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian Book Review, Crikey and Meanjin, among other publications. Megan edits Impact, a bilingual newsletter of feminist journalism and teaches at the Sorbonne-Nouvelle University. She is the inaugural winner of the Island Magazine Nonfiction Prize.
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Praise
‘Desire Paths is an arresting work ... Its ideas are at once bruisingly big and tender. Clement has a dry wit and a flinty mind and she uses these to devastating effect as she interrogates the death of her father in the middle of the most disruptive global event since the last world war.’ – Rick Morton, author of One Hundred Years of Dirt
‘A compulsive read, and a beautiful untangling of self and statehood.’ – Paul Dalgarno, author of A Country of Eternal Light
‘Hopeful, tragic, funny and poignant, this book blew me away. I was gripped, from beginning to end.’ – Jayne Tuttle, author of Paris or Die
‘With prose that is both tenderly revealing and sharply analytical, Desire Paths is equally at home in the microcosms of the personal and the big picture of international politics. Megan Clement's journalistic expertise reveals the hypocrisies of Australia’s attitude to ‘home‘, showing how it punishes both those of us ensconced here and those we exclude. When she turns the spotlight on herself and her family, this memoir is heartbreaking.’ – Jane Rawson, author of A History of Dreams
‘A sometimes haunting, always lyrical account of the paths life wears in our hearts and minds.’ – Jonathan Green, author of The Year My Politics Broke
‘Desire Paths is a story of constant movement across the world, and a journey through grief, told in sometimes incandescent prose. It will be read long after we forget the COVID years which frame the story and the death of Clement's father.’ – Dennis Altman, author of Death in the Sauna
ISBN
9781761153358
Format
Paperback
Cost
$36.99
Pub Date
May 2025
Extent
320pp
Rights
ANZ
Category
Non-fiction
Themes
Borders. Family. Love.