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image of person or book cover 2519165525587506592.jpg
Cover image courtesy of publisher.
y separately published work icon Amnesty novel  
Issue Details: First known date: 2020... 2020 Amnesty
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'A riveting, suspenseful, and exuberant novel from the bestselling, Man Booker Prize–winning author of The White Tiger and Selection Day about a young illegal immigrant who must decide whether to report crucial information about a murder—and thereby risk deportation.

'Danny—formerly Dhananjaya Rajaratnam—is an illegal immigrant in Sydney, Australia, denied refugee status after he fled from Sri Lanka. Working as a cleaner, living out of a grocery storeroom, for three years he’s been trying to create a new identity for himself. And now, with his beloved vegan girlfriend, Sonja, with his hidden accent and highlights in his hair, he is as close as he has ever come to living a normal life.

'But then one morning, Danny learns a female client of his has been murdered. The deed was done with a knife, at a creek he’d been to with her before; and a jacket was left at the scene, which he believes belongs to another of his clients—a doctor with whom Danny knows the woman was having an affair. Suddenly Danny is confronted with a choice: Come forward with his knowledge about the crime and risk being deported? Or say nothing, and let justice go undone? Over the course of this day, evaluating the weight of his past, his dreams for the future, and the unpredictable, often absurd reality of living invisibly and undocumented, he must wrestle with his conscience and decide if a person without rights still has responsibilities.

'Propulsive, insightful, and full of Aravind Adiga’s signature wit and magic, Amnesty is both a timeless moral struggle and a universal story with particular urgency today.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

Notes

  • Dedication : For Mark Greif to thank him for twenty-two years of friendship
  • Epigraph : "Within the four seas all men are brothers" - On an arch in Chinatown, Sydney

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • New York (City), New York (State),
      c
      United States of America (USA),
      c
      Americas,
      :
      Scribner ,
      2020 .
      image of person or book cover 2519165525587506592.jpg
      Cover image courtesy of publisher.
      Extent: 272p.
      Note/s:
      • Published 18 February 2020.
      ISBN: 9781982127244 (hbk), 9781982127312 (ebook)
    • London,
      c
      England,
      c
      c
      United Kingdom (UK),
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Picador ,
      2020 .
      image of person or book cover 3324690705216761768.jpg
      Cover image courtesy of publisher.
      Extent: 352p.
      Note/s:
      • Published 20 February 2020.
      ISBN: 9781509879038 (hbk), 9781509879069 (ebook)
    • c
      India,
      c
      South Asia, South and East Asia, Asia,
      :
      Pan Macmillan India ,
      2020 .
      image of person or book cover 236226415258256569.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 272p.p.
      Note/s:
      • Published 20 February 2020.
      ISBN: 9789389109436, 9389109434
    • New York (City), New York (State),
      c
      United States of America (USA),
      c
      Americas,
      :
      Scribner ,
      2021 .
      image of person or book cover 7879392548613535382.jpg
      Image courtesy of publisher's website.
      Extent: 256p.p.
      ISBN: 9781982127305 (pbk), 1982127309, 9781982127312 (ebk)
    • Waterville, Maine,
      c
      United States of America (USA),
      c
      Americas,
      :
      Thorndike Press ,
      2021 .
      image of person or book cover 4288298045127960998.jpg
      Image courtesy of publisher's website.
      Extent: 373p.p.
      ISBN: 9781432879785, 1432879782
    • London,
      c
      England,
      c
      c
      United Kingdom (UK),
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Picador ,
      2021 .
      image of person or book cover 3824871980920513032.png
      Image courtesy of publisher's website.
      Extent: 272p.p.
      Note/s:
      • Published 21 January 2021.
      ISBN: 9781509879052 (pbk)
Alternative title: Amnestie Roman
Language: German
    • Munich,
      c
      Germany,
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      C. H. Beck ,
      2020 .
      image of person or book cover 1112989832084958930.jpg
      Image courtesy of publisher's website.
      Extent: 286p.p.
      ISBN: 9783406755514, 3406755518

Other Formats

  • Sound recording.
  • Large print.

Works about this Work

The Saddest of Stories, Beautifully Told : Your Guide to the Miles Franklin 2021 Shortlist Jen Webb , 2021 single work column
— Appears in: The Conversation , 15 July 2021; The Guardian Australia , 15 July 2021;
Outside the Circle Geordie Williamson , 2020 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 14 March 2020; (p. 21)

— Review of Amnesty Aravind Adiga , 2020 novel
House Rules Beejay Silcox , 2020 single work review
— Appears in: The Times Literary Supplement , 6 March 2020; (p. 9)

— Review of Amnesty Aravind Adiga , 2020 novel
'SYDNEY IS CHOKING in Aravind Adiga's Amnesty, the sky "darkened by a film of windborne woodsmoke" that has coiled its way down from a bushfire in the Blue Mountains. The smoke is a grey wraith, haunting the city, triggering fire alarms in shops and houses as it sweeps across the harbour. It is a quiet background detail in Adiga's fourth novel. But as Australia burns, it feels consequential: not prescience so much as a kind of monstrous inevitability. With Amnesty, Adiga captures the breathless grief of stepping into a future that has already been written. It is equal parts elegy and indictment.' (Introduction)
Amnesty by Aravind Adiga Alison Broinowski , 2020 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , April no. 420 2020;

— Review of Amnesty Aravind Adiga , 2020 novel

'Much political mileage has been made in Australia from the turning back of ‘boat people’. Travel by boat is the cheapest means of getting to this island continent, and the most dangerous. Boat travellers are the poorest and the most likely to be caught and deported or sent to an offshore camp. But their number is less than half of those who arrive by air as tourists and apply for refugee protection: some 100,000 have done so during the seven years of this Coalition government.' (Introduction)

Aravind Adiga : Amnesty Elena Gomez , 2020 single work review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 21-27 March 2020;

— Review of Amnesty Aravind Adiga , 2020 novel

'Dhananjaya Rajaratnam has lived in Sydney for four years. He goes by the name Danny, has blond-tipped hair and has long abandoned the course that once qualified him for a student visa. Now he cleans houses for inner-city professionals and lives in the storeroom of a convenience store. Danny is invisible to most Australians around him, but lives in constant fear of being deported. This fear is mixed with Danny’s quirky reflections on English idioms and the physical traits and mannerisms of the locals he wants to blend in with.' (Introduction)

Aravind Adiga : Amnesty Elena Gomez , 2020 single work review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 21-27 March 2020;

— Review of Amnesty Aravind Adiga , 2020 novel

'Dhananjaya Rajaratnam has lived in Sydney for four years. He goes by the name Danny, has blond-tipped hair and has long abandoned the course that once qualified him for a student visa. Now he cleans houses for inner-city professionals and lives in the storeroom of a convenience store. Danny is invisible to most Australians around him, but lives in constant fear of being deported. This fear is mixed with Danny’s quirky reflections on English idioms and the physical traits and mannerisms of the locals he wants to blend in with.' (Introduction)

Amnesty by Aravind Adiga Alison Broinowski , 2020 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , April no. 420 2020;

— Review of Amnesty Aravind Adiga , 2020 novel

'Much political mileage has been made in Australia from the turning back of ‘boat people’. Travel by boat is the cheapest means of getting to this island continent, and the most dangerous. Boat travellers are the poorest and the most likely to be caught and deported or sent to an offshore camp. But their number is less than half of those who arrive by air as tourists and apply for refugee protection: some 100,000 have done so during the seven years of this Coalition government.' (Introduction)

House Rules Beejay Silcox , 2020 single work review
— Appears in: The Times Literary Supplement , 6 March 2020; (p. 9)

— Review of Amnesty Aravind Adiga , 2020 novel
'SYDNEY IS CHOKING in Aravind Adiga's Amnesty, the sky "darkened by a film of windborne woodsmoke" that has coiled its way down from a bushfire in the Blue Mountains. The smoke is a grey wraith, haunting the city, triggering fire alarms in shops and houses as it sweeps across the harbour. It is a quiet background detail in Adiga's fourth novel. But as Australia burns, it feels consequential: not prescience so much as a kind of monstrous inevitability. With Amnesty, Adiga captures the breathless grief of stepping into a future that has already been written. It is equal parts elegy and indictment.' (Introduction)
Outside the Circle Geordie Williamson , 2020 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 14 March 2020; (p. 21)

— Review of Amnesty Aravind Adiga , 2020 novel
He’s Short and Brown Among the Tall and White Dwight Garner , 2020 single work column
— Appears in: The New York Times , 10 February 2020; (p. 6)

'Danny Rajaratnam, the protagonist of the bracing new novel by Aravind Adiga, “Amnesty,” has a vegan girlfriend. She looks at him and says things like: “You know what milk is? A kind of pus. Think about that, you’re guzzling pus.”' (Introduction)

The Saddest of Stories, Beautifully Told : Your Guide to the Miles Franklin 2021 Shortlist Jen Webb , 2021 single work column
— Appears in: The Conversation , 15 July 2021; The Guardian Australia , 15 July 2021;
Last amended 23 Sep 2021 14:47:40
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