Amnesty, Aravind Adiga
Amnesty, Aravind Adiga
2 Rating(s)
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Amnesty

Author: Aravind Adiga

Narrator: Vikas Adam

Unabridged: 8 hr 31 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 02/18/2020


Synopsis

An “urgent and significant book [that] speaks to our times” (The New York Times Book Review) 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.

“Searing and inventive,” Amnesty is a timeless and universal story that succeeds at “illuminating the courage of displaced peoples and the cruelties of those who conspire against them” (Star Tribune, Minneapolis).

About Aravind Adiga

Aravind Adiga was born in India in 1974 and attended Columbia and Oxford universities. He is the author of the novels Amnesty; Selection Day, now a series on Netflix; The White Tiger, which won the Man Booker Prize; and the story collection Between the Assassinations. He lives in Mumbai, India.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Jim

[Edited 10/9/23] A good story, a psychological thriller, that gets us inside the skin of a brown-skinned young man who is an illegal immigrant from Sri Lanka living in Australia. I know I should call him ‘undocumented,' but Danny (that’s the name he goes by) makes a point of emphasizing the ‘illegal’......more

Goodreads review by Paige

Danny, a young adult in his twenties from Sri Lanka, has been living in Australia illegally for four years as a cleaner. Soon into the novel, one of the residents that he cleaned for is killed. Danny might have an idea of what could have happened, but he internally struggles with the responsibility......more

Goodreads review by Barbara

Dhananjaya Rajaraham (Danny) - a Tamil - was lured to Australia when reps from a 'vocational college' came to Sri Lanka to recruit students. Danny's father helped him pony up the airfare and tuition, and Danny entered Australia on a student visa. The 'college' turned out to be an old warehouse, and......more

Now shortlisted for the 2021 Miles Franklin award. Aravind Adiga’s “White Tiger” was I think the weakest Booker-winning book I have ever read: not my least favourite (there are other books which did not work for me at all – Disgrace, Brief History of Seven Killings, The Finkler Question – but where I......more


Quotes

"Narrator Vikas Adam brings his smooth tenor to another engaging audiobook by Aravind Adiga. Adam creates a quirky persona to portray young Danny's immigrant life in Australia, capturing the vocal rhythms of the young Sri Lankan formerly known as Dhananjaya Rajaratnam. His dilemma is presented vividly. Should he continue evading the authorities, or come forward with evidence to solve a murder? Adam's voice is easy on the ear, so listeners can sink into this hilarious and heartrending story about the search for home. Adam depicts the dramatic tension between Danny's two choices as well as the vivacity of a young person who is working to fit into a new culture. Fans of Adiga's novels will savor this performance."

"Aravind Adiga’s fifth novel tells the story of Danny, who was born in Sri Lanka and has spent the past four years in Australia as an undocumented immigrant. Danny works as a house cleaner and sleeps in the storeroom of a bullying shopkeeper. His life is dominated by vigilance over anything in his appearance, behavior or speech that might expose him; accordingly, markers of civil status and background are crucial to the story. Narrator Vikas Adam is pure genius in his delivery of accents and manners of speech of different ethnic and national categories, fully immersing the listener in Danny’s precarious existence. Matters become more fraught as Danny learns that a woman who lives in one of the apartments he cleans has been murdered. She had been generous to him but had involved him in her extramarital affair with an unsavory man named Prakash. Danny has good reason to believe Prakash is the murderer — but turning him in will lead to his own exposure. Brilliantly narrated, this is a powerful depiction of the character, predicament and decisions of a powerless man."