“No one wants to become a refugee. No one should have to endure this humiliating and arduous ordeal. Yet, millions do. Even one refugee forced to flee, one refugee forced to return to danger is one too many.”
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
Message for World Refugee Day 2011
Showing posts with label Suspense fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Suspense fiction. Show all posts

Saturday, 28 April 2012

War close to home

The devil's tears / Steven Horne. Sydney: Macmillan Australia, 2010


The Devil's tears is a gripping novel, which takes the reader right into the heart of East Timor; firstly at the time of the Indonesian invasion in 1975, and then some 22 years later. In 1975, when bloody war raveages his beloved Portuguese Timor, Cesar da Silva flees with his wife and children from a country in flames. Becoming separated from his young family and believing they are dead, Cesar finds passage to Portugal and later Australia. In occupied Timor, Cesar's wife is alive, but her troubles are far from over.
In 1997, more than 20 years later, a young Australian journalist and her photographer are drawn to the killing fields of Timor. Compelled to expose the truth of the terrible suffering of the Timorese people at the hands of the invaders to the world, they become entangled in the da Silva family tragedy.
Through the telling of these two intertwining personal stories the book gives great insight into what happened during the 24 year occupation, when around 100,000 people died from fighting, disease and starvation...
 

Friday, 27 April 2012

Political thriller

Prohibited zone / Alastair Sarre.  Adelaide, SA :  Wakefield Press, 2011
Set in the desert of the Woomera Prohibited Area, suburban Adelaide and the Fleurieu  Peninsula, this political thriller, maintains intrigue and pace  throughout. In the dark days that followed 9/11, the hardest thing was sorting the good guys from the bad. In Australia they got it wrong. Saira Abdiani and her friend, Amir Ali Khan, are Afghan refugees with a violent past. When Saira and Amir both disappear from the Woomera Refugee Detention Centre, the cops, the secret service and a ragtag gang of vigilantes are all on the trail. Steve West is a former football hero turned mining engineer who just wants a dirty weekend in town. He ends up seeing the dirty side of the War on Terror.

Alastair Sarre’s ear for dialogue, eye for place and character, and deft skill in pitting historical and political viewpoints against each other, make Prohibited Zone an excellent, provocative read.