Safe Haven (Shankari Chandran, Ultimo)

Miles Franklin–winning author Shankari Chandran turns her focus to Australia’s inhumane practice of mandatory detention in her fourth novel, Safe Haven. As in Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens, a focal part of the unfolding story is Sri Lanka’s brutal civil war that left hundreds of thousands displaced and dead. Tamil asylum seeker Fina survives a near-death experience at sea to find herself resettled in the welcoming Australian town of Hastings. But one courageous moment of truth-telling sees her back where she started—the Port Camden Detention Centre awaiting deportation. Consecutive suicides of a guard and a young boy prompt an investigation and thrust the detention centre into the spotlight, propelling the story forward as Fina grapples with secrets of her own. Safe Haven oscillates between the perspectives of Fina and Lucky, an Australian-Tamil investigator dispatched to the detention centre, to tell a story of grief, trauma and the interconnectedness of our fates. Real-life parallels are present everywhere in Chandran’s gripping narrative, from the Norwegian freight ship Galakse that rescued Fina—clearly evoking Tampa—to Hastings, emblematic of the rural Queensland town of Biloela, which rallied around the Nadesalingam family in 2018. Chandran’s writing is evocative and studded with beautiful imagery but doesn’t shy away from depicting extreme cruelty and suffering. It will appeal to those who enjoyed Behrouz Boochani’s No Friend But the Mountains, Abbas Nazari’s After the Tampa and Tracey Lien’s All That’s Left Unsaid.

Books+Publishing reviewer: Sonia Nair is a Melbourne-based writer and critic. Books+Publishing is Australia’s number-one source of pre-publication book reviews.

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