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https://theconversation.com/shankari-chandrans-safe-haven-a-gripping-and-persuasive-novel-of-asylum-seekers-reads-like-an-open-wound-227151>
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Review: Safe Haven – Shankari Chandran (Ultimo Press)
There have been many Australian publications about refugees and asylum seekers.
Many are memoir or reportage. Perhaps the best known is Behrooz Boochani’s
autobiographical
No Friend But the Mountains (2018).
But there is also a body of such narratives written in the form of fiction.
Think of Maxine Beneba Clarke’s
Foreign Soil (2014), E. Lily Yu’s
On Fragile
Waves (2021), or Zaheda Ghani’s
Pomegranate and Fig (2022).
Through what has been called “the emotional power of close-ups”, both the
fiction and nonfiction written on this topic has the potential to interrupt
public perceptions and official discourses on refugee issues. Such works
restore names and faces and personalities to people who have been reduced by
bureaucracy to merely a problem, a statistic.
Safe Haven, Shankari Chandran’s fourth novel and her first since winning the
Miles Franklin Literary Award for
Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens (2022), is a
new entrant to this body of work. Its often deeply harrowing narrative explores
what it means to be a refugee subjected to Australia’s draconian legislation
and processes, and the significance of the protests and struggles against those
processes by many Australians.
Its prologue is in the form of a transcript of a mayday call from a sinking
boat, (Suspected Illegal Entry Vessel) SIEV-25. A Norwegian cargo vessel, the
Galakse, rescues the boat, saving 43 Sri Lankan Tamil asylum seekers and
delivering them to Port Camden Detention Centre.
The scene has echoes of the 2001 Tampa incident, when another Norwegian vessel,
MV Tampa, rescued asylum seekers fleeing war and oppression. Australia
already had built a reputation for harsh treatment of asylum seekers. The
incident ratcheted it up, leading to the implementation of the Pacific
Solution.
Under this “solution”, refugees arriving by sea were exiled to offshore
detention centres to await processing, at the mercy of a system that was
staggeringly indifferent to their safety and wellbeing."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
