Get Free Shipping on orders over $79
Foreign Fruit : A Personal History of the Orange - Katie Goh

Foreign Fruit

A Personal History of the Orange

By: Katie Goh

Hardcover | 9 September 2025

At a Glance

Hardcover


RRP $36.99

$33.75

or 4 interest-free payments of $8.44 with

 or 

Ships in 5 to 7 business days



A sharp-sweet memoir of change, identity and hybridity. I loved it - KATHERINE MAY, author of Wintering

The orange we know, waxed in vats, gathered in red netting and stacked in supermarket displays, is not the same orange that grew from the first straggling orange grove that took root on the Tibetan plateau, part pomelo and part mandarin. The orange is a souvenir of history. Across time, it has been a harbinger of God and doom, fortune and failure, pleasure and suffering. It is a fruit containing metaphors, dreams, mythologies, superstitions, parables and histories within its tough rind. So, what happens when the fruit is peeled and each segment - each moment of history, each meaning in time - is pulled apart?

In this distinct, subversive and intimate hybrid memoir, Katie Goh explores the orange as a means of understanding the world, and herself within it. What she finds is a world of violence, colonialism, resilience, survival, adaptation - and of unexpected beauty and sweetness against all odds.

Industry Reviews
"'Like the fruit at its centre, Foreign Fruit is both sweet and sharp. In Goh's skilled hands, the orange becomes a powerful symbol to explore centuries of migration and memory. This book is a masterful blend of social history and memoir. I savoured every page of Goh's prose' - FREYA BROMLEY, author of THE TIDAL YEAR


'An encounter not only with the orange, but with the reality of diasporic life in hostile environments. Goh patiently and skilfully reinvents the orange as a means of inventing her identity [. . .] and what we're given is a story more surprising, potent and various than we could ever have imagined' - AMY KEY, author of ARRANGEMENTS IN BLUE


'This is an important, intelligent and insightful book that melds Goh's journalistic and investigative skills on the history and politics of migration and colonialism with wonderfully warm yet astute reflections on her diasporic family and being mixed race, and how identities shape-shift over time, circumstance and geographies' - AMANDA THOMSON, author of BELONGING


'Elusive, subverting the popular genre of the ""history of things"" in elegant ways, Katie Goh writes with as admirable a preciseness about self-othering as she does about botanical history' - JESSICA GAITAN JOHANNESSON, author of THE NERVES AND THEIR ENDINGS and HOW WE ARE TRANSLATED


'I don't know anyone who wouldn't love this book. Airy and rooted, its style as beautiful as its investigations, this is the kind of book that holds in it the unexplored ecosophical inquiries of our time' - SUMANA ROY, author of HOW I BECAME A TREE


'This is a book to be devoured - so visceral that I can feel the drip of the orange's juice on my skin as I read. The writing is poetic and beautiful, every detail written with such care. But this story is laced with pain that feels physical, thanks to Katie's ability to capture the small moments whilst also laying bare the violence of racism, the complexity of migration and so much more' - ANNA SULAN MASING, author of CHINESE AND OTHER ASIAN"

More in Memoirs

Told You So - Mayci Neeley

Hardcover

RRP $49.99

$36.75

26%
OFF
Exposure : A photographic memoir - Greg Weight

RRP $44.99

$37.75

16%
OFF
Always You - Chloe Fisher

Paperback

RRP $34.99

$28.75

18%
OFF
The Last Hart Beating : From the Dungeon to WWE - Nattie Neidhart

RRP $49.99

$38.75

22%
OFF
A Thousand Feasts : Small Moments of Joy ... A Memoir of Sorts - Nigel Slater
My Family and Other Animals : Penguin Clothbound Classics - Gerald Durrell
The Whole Truth - Jackie O

RRP $26.99

$22.99

15%
OFF
Book of Lives : A Memoir of Sorts - Margaret Atwood

RRP $69.99

$52.75

25%
OFF
The Voice Inside : The Illustrated Edition - John Farnham

RRP $65.00

$48.99

25%
OFF
Mastering My Messy Life : My Journey from Chaos to Clarity - Steph Pase
The Look : The No1 New York Times bestseller - Michelle Obama

RRP $69.99

$52.75

25%
OFF
Unapologetically Ita - Ita Buttrose

SIGNED COPY

RRP $49.99

$36.99

26%
OFF
The Curious Diplomat : A memoir from the frontlines of diplomacy - Lachlan Strahan
Pump Up the Jam - Amanda Keller

$34.99

Nowhere Girl : Life as a Member of ADHD's Lost Generation - Carla Ciccone
Wifedom : Mrs Orwell's Invisible Life : Our July Book of the Month - Anna Funder
Death of an Ordinary Man - Sarah Perry

RRP $36.99

$29.75

20%
OFF