Foreign Country

Estranged sistes—Eva and Elisabeta Novak—have not spoken since Eva’s young daughter, Gracie, was killed in a road accident. More than a decade after the accident, and long after Eva has moved overseas, Elizabeta calls, insisting that Eva return home.

But when Eva arrives at her sister’s house, she discovers that Elizabeta is dead. Eva finds that she has been appointed the executor of Elizabeta’s estate, and as she works her way through the monumental task of clearing out her sister’s house, she comes to know her sister again through the objects and documents that she encounters. In this process of clearing the house, Eva is forced to reckon with their shared past and the possibility that her mind cannot be trusted.

Foreign Country engages with themes of grief and loss, and the instability of memory. The novel explores the difficulty of coming to terms with conflicting accounts of the past and asks how well we ever really know the ones that we love, or our own past selves.