‘I’m from Tasmania, which is an island on the periphery of Australia, and Australia is an island on the periphery of the world.’

The author Richard Flanagan is in Beijing talking to a room full of Australians. Roughly one hundred of them, mostly white, have crowded in to The Bookworm, a bookshop familiar to anyone in Beijing’s small English-language literary scene. Near the front is an enthusiastic Chinese fan, but the rest are members of Beijing’s Australian expat community. They know where Tasmania is, and they know, keenly, that Australia is at the edge of everything else.