Dhananjaya “Danny” Rajaratnam has been living in Australia illegally for 4 years now. He has masked his Sri Lankan accent. He has golden streaks in his hair. He starts his sentences with a loud “Look” and finishes with “I reckon” because he has been told that is how Australians speak. He references rugby whenever he is happy or sad or angry but never calls out the sport by its name. He has gradually become an invisible ‘Australian.’ He cleans houses, works at a grocery store, and is willing to do anything to live another day.
One day he finds out a woman whose house he used to clean has been murdered. He has a vague guess who the murderer might be. The content of the book lies here. Should Danny go to the police and tell them what he knows risking the exposure of his illegal status or should he just look after himself? What is the right thing to do? What will ‘Honest Danny,' as he has been called so many times, do what is right?
AMNESTY by Aravind Adiga is an intriguing character study. Even at the novel's short length, the Man-Booker Prize-winning author speaks volumes. We get a glimpse at Danny’s past life in Sri Lanka, his brief venture in Dubai, his intentions, his motives. . . it’s all there. We keep asking the same question page after page as Danny tells us his story, that his vegan girlfriend asks him so many times as well, “Why did he leave everything behind to be here?” The answer is right in front of us all along.
AMNESTY is a book about people. It so beautifully describes how each person will behave with respect to citizenship, authenticity, and nationality. It is a rich tapestry of culture and heritage, and understands where everybody comes from and doesn’t blame them for it. It is also a portal to these beautiful places against whose backdrop the story is set in. The city of Sydney and the island Batticaloa of Sri Lanka come alive. We can feel the heat of Sydney and enjoy the cool water of the lagoon of Sri Lanka simultaneously.
AMNESTY is a story that we have to believe, in spite of our unreliable narrator, and yet we end up rooting for him (or at least I did). Danny says at one point, “There are some thick old walls on which poster has been stuck on poster. Peel away the posters--and the whole structure falls.”
If you like reading such thought-provoking books, I am sure AMNESTY by Aravind Adiga won’t disappoint you.
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.
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