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For international reading purposes this was ideal. A book by an Indian author, set in Australia with a plot revolving around a Sri Lankan immigrant. Plus I’m always interested in what sort of authors win Booker Prize and this one did, albeit for previous work. Amnesty is a book that took 5 years to complete and its deceptively slim volume conceals a very serious meditation on the subject of immigration and social responsibilities. It is, in general, a fascinating question…What does a society owe a person? What does a person owe their society? What is the set of obligations that weaves the fabric of a cohesive social construct? But here it’s made all the more complicated because the protagonist is in the country illegally, a persona non grata, someone whom Australian government declared unwanted, denied legal protection and is therefore existing on the very fringes of society (cash jobs, sketchy living accommodations, etc.) all while trying desperately to fit in. In my opinion the author did a terrific job of representing this way of life and the dehumanizing effects of it, the daily anxiety, the myriad of small and not so small indignities, the constant fear, the lack of security and safety nets and so on. The scams meant to take advantage of those desperate to leave their own country to try to improve their circumstances, it’s how our protagonist, Danny, eventually ends up working at a cleaner instead of getting and using a college education. And then there’s the moral dilemma that this novel is built on…one day Danny becomes aware of a murder of one of his clients and realizes that another client of his might have had something to do with it. These are the people he was fairly close to as far as employer/employee relationships go, so it puts him in an awkward, terrible really, position. To tell the truth would mean not only to turn in someone he knows, but also to risk deportation. And so Danny’s day (the entire novel takes place mostly in one day, outside of flashbacks, backstories, etc.) becomes an elaborate game of the…whatever Australian predator/prey animal analog might be…where the roles are constantly switching as does the power. Doing the right thing is proving to be very complicated, even for a man who knows exactly what the right thing is. It’s one of those life changing character defining moments in a person’s life. The arm on the cover isn’t waving, it’s reaching out to grab a lifeline. And if I wanted to go further with the cover metaphors, which I’m not sure I do, the colored rings are meant to represent the multiethnic society that Danny is so desperate to really belong to…but no, that’s just…enough of interpreting the cover design. Suffice it to say the story is important, timely and interesting, although I somehow didn’t find it as compelling as it obviously was meant to be. The writing was very good, though not quite for me, so it ended up being the sort of book I intellectually appreciated instead of emotionally engaging with it. Something about the writing and I can’t quite put a finger on what it was. The ending might have had something to do with it. Or maybe the certain level of frustration with the main interaction’s dynamics. But at any rate, objectively, this was a pretty good and certainly worthy read. Thanks Netgalley.