- Indian-Australian author Aravind Adiga has written a quite brilliant evocation of the constant tensions felt by illegal immigrants in Australia as they live, work and observe life around them. He also depicts the strangeness of Australian ways that are so apparent to them.
- Danny, the main character, initially flew to Australia on a student visa. He had declined the option suggested by friends in Sri Lanka to pay people smugglers to come by boat. He saw himself as a legitimate refugee after having been tortured by the Sri Lankan military because he was deemed a 'terrorist' Tamil.
- He overstayed his visa and is now officially an 'illegal'. He chose to apply for refugee status immediately after his legitimate arrival by plane to Sydney, and his application was rejected. Now his passport has expired, he has no Medicare, no driving licence and no social security benefits. He lives in a tiny, rundown attic above a grocery shop. And he is terrified someone will dob him in.
- So....he has an extremely uninteresting, although stressful, life. Nothing significant happens. He trawls around inner Sydney, as in Ulysses, having random thoughts and memories, and does a few apartment cleaning jobs. The streets of Glebe, Broadway and Sydney's CBD, including George St and William St, the sandstone buildings, the Coca-Cola sign in Kings Cross, Central Station, Circular Quay, the buses and trains: all these celebrated Sydney landmarks have become his neighbourhood. But it's a seedy, untrustworthy, cruel, corrupt world that illegals inhabit. They're always anxious and on edge. The screeching birds of Australian cities don't help.
- This novel is as much about Indians in Australia generally as it is about ‘white people’. Adiga doesn’t really like them. He paints them as loud, crude, grasping and self-indulgent. His first novel, the 2008 Booker prize winner The White Tiger vividly excoriated them too. He’s not too enamoured of the Chinese either. Muslims are occasionally mentioned but never negatively. Prior to coming to Australia Danny spent a satisfying year working in a hotel in Dubai. It is apparent he prefers white Australia, despite our underlying racist character. White people have got the law, and we don’t.…where did it come from, this fair law? In Sri Lanka … it does exist - evil. A man puts on a uniform, and becomes the uniform.
- Quietly Adiga builds a plot. Two of Danny's cleaning clients, Radha, and her lover Prakash, are addicted gamblers. Rhada's husband Mark sells real estate to Chinese investors. Rhada is murdered.
- Adiga handles this deftly and he builds a measure of tension and dread. The police investigation presents Danny with a moral choice. Because if he talks to them about what he suspects he's effectively disclosing his illegality.
- This novel has been shortlisted for this year's Miles Frankin Award. It deserves to win.
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