 Book Reviews
with Robin Osborne
The Tyrant's Novel
By Thomas Keneally
Doubleday $35
 With its daunting title, grim cover and bleak message, this book is one that the prolific Thomas Keneally might have preferred not to write, but conscience calls, as he reveals in the 'The Visitor's Preface' where two writers - one clearly the author - enter a detention centre to meet an asylum-seeker who has won a UN award for 'trying to keep his fellow internees sane and healthy.'
An outspoken critic of Canberra's policies, Keneally penned this novel to spearhead his campaign against mandatory detention. The chilling book humanises 'foreign' refugees by giving the central character, an Iraqi, the western name of Alan Sheriff and attributing European social values - drinks parties, barbecues and the like - to his country of origin.
This might make them seem more 'like us' but there is no mistaking the reality, for the nation's president, 'Great Uncle', a Saddam Hussein clone, rules through brutal security forces, the Overguard, and unites the nation by fuelling endless conflict with his neighbour - 'the Others' - ie. Iran.
Sheriff, well known for his writings, has received a US contract for a novel, along with a $40,000 advance that liberates him from dependency on the state, which has the power to censor books.
With his actress wife Sarah, he lives a comfortable existence amongst other cultural figures who make the required compromises to remain in work - and stay out of jail.
Sheriff is sucked into the vortex of patronage when his wife dies suddenly and the commissars see his talent and overseas connections as an ideal way to sanitise the regime's image before a crucial UN vote on the nation's crippling economic sanctions.
Thus is born the Tyrant's Novel, a work to be penned by Sheriff but claimed by Great Uncle, with the manuscript to be completed within a month - or else.
Sheriff agonises his way through the task, handing the work to the president after undergoing the required cleansing ritual of showers, cavity inspections and liberal applications of Great Uncle's favourite cologne, Tommy Hilfiger.
The delighted dictator offers him a villa and other rewards: 'I was to be made the Emperor's caged canary.'
A broken man, Sheriff flees into exile on an oil tanker and declares himself a refugee when the ship reaches international waters.
The rest is well known: he ends up in a remote camp, along with the other refugees who each have a distinctive tale of suffering, whatever their name or former homeland.
- Thanks to Book Warehouse in Keen Street, Lismore for supporting this column
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