Amnesty

A young illegal immigrant has crucial information about a murder. Should he come forward and risk deportation, or let a killer go unpunished?

In Sydney, Sri Lankan immigrant Dhananjaya Rajaratnam - now known as to all as Danny - has overstayed his student visa, thus rendering himself illegal. Working as a cleaner of the houses and apartments of privileged Sydneysiders, living out of a grocery storeroom, for four years he has been trying to create a new identity for himself. And now, with his beloved vegan girlfriend, Sonja, having disguised his telltale accent and with blond highlights in his hair, he is as close as he has been to living a normal Australian life.

But then one morning, Danny learns that Radha Thomas, one of his clients, has been murdered. The woman was knifed and a jacket was left at the scene, a jacket that Danny believes belongs to another client - with whom Danny knows she was having an affair. Suddenly Danny is confronted with a choice: come forward as a witness and risk being deported, or say nothing, and let justice go undone? Over the course of a single 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 nevertheless has responsibilities.

Propulsive, insightful, and full of Aravind Adiga's acute observation and wit, Amnesty tells a story that is on the one hand a timeless and universal moral struggle and, on the other, an immigrant's tale of particular urgency in today's world.

'Adiga is a novelist . . . one who has grown in his art since his Booker Prize-winning debut, The White Tiger.' Kamila Shamsie, Guardian

'Adiga is a real writer - that is to say, someone who forges an original voice and vision' Sunday Times

'The most exciting novelist writing in English today.' A. N. Wilson