Marija Peričić is a writer based in Melbourne. Her first novel, The Lost Pages (Allen & Unwin), won The Australian/Vogel’s Literary Award 2017, and was shortlisted for the 2017 Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction. Marija was named as a Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Australian novelist in 2018 for The Lost Pages.
Marija’s most recent novel is Foreign Country, published by Ultimo Press in June 2025. 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.
Her second novel, Exquisite Corpse, was shortlisted for the Davitt Award and is a literary psychological thriller about love and obsession, coercion and control. It was published by Ultimo Press in June 2023.
Marija’s short stories, essays and poetry have also appeared in Meanjin, Southerly, Going Down Swinging, and The Big Issue Fiction Edition. Marija holds a Creative Writing PhD from the University of Melbourne and teaches creative writing workshops.
Praise for Foreign Country:
‘Deft, haunting and finely paced, Foreign Country is a devastating, engrossing story told with an assured voice. A novel that lingers.’ – Katherine Brabon
‘Vivid and alive with narrative richness and catharsis’ Books + Publishing
Praise for Exquisite Corpse:
‘Haunting.’ – Australian Women’s Weekly
‘There are stories which haunt one forever and come out like ghosts for the retelling. This is one of them.’ – Herald Sun
‘Morbid, confronting and intoxicating’ – Artshub
‘A brilliant hammer-swing at the notion that a woman is her most beautiful in death, Peričić’s darkly visceral account of entitlement and deluded obsession is jaw-dropping. Exquisite Corpse is ingenious Australian gothic at its macabre best.’ – Sarah Schmidt, author of The Blue Hour and See What I Have Done
‘Historical fiction for a post #metoo world, Exquisite Corpse gets to the bone-tingling core of why consent matters, and always has.’ – Pip Smith, author of Half Wild
‘Peričić’s retelling takes a more realistic approach to explore how romanticising grand gestures can mask the darker side of love, including coercive control and obsession.’ – Harper’s Bazaar
‘A darkly compelling exploration of the subtle and not so subtle ways in which men controlled the lives of women in 1930s Stockholm … To reference the cover quote by Sarah Schmidt, author of the grisly See What Have Done, your jaw will drop and may never close again.’ – Readings Monthly
‘Bold and boundary-pushing … Peričić makes the tale her own, handing back power to the women it was stolen from – and reclaiming their story.’ – Guardian
‘A clever exercise in revealing the rot inherent in toxic romance narratives’ – Sydney Morning Herald