No More Boats
A Novel
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A "timely and powerful" novel that provides "a haunting and compassionate consideration of the question of who can and cannot come into a country" (Publishers Weekly).
Set in Sydney's working-class western suburbs, No More Boats tells of a family whose unraveling lives collide with a refugee crisis known as the Tampa Affair, when over four hundred refugees were left stranded fifteen miles off the Australian coast.
The story revolves around Antonio, an Italian immigrant, his wife, Rose, with a rich back story of her own, and their two children, Nico and Clare—both, in their owns ways, drifting. After a job-related accident forces him into early retirement and the familiar scaffolding of work, family, the immigrant's dream of betterment, is removed from his life, Antonio's mind begins to fragment. Manipulated by the media and made vulnerable by his feeling of irrelevance, Antonio commits an act that makes him a lightning rod for the factions that are bitterly at odds over the Tampa Affair . . .
A finalist for the Miles Franklin Literary Award in 2018, No More Boats is not only a riveting story of a modern family; it also directly addresses issues that many nations are grappling with—immigration, xenophobia, protectionism, racism, media manipulation, and the precariousness of the working poor—and is "full of timely lessons for those pondering the rise of me-first nationalism throughout the world" (Kirkus Reviews).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In her timely and powerful novel, Castagna (Small Indiscretions) successfully delves into issues of immigration, urban development, and xenophobia. Readers follow the story of Italian immigrant Antonio Martone in the Sydney suburbs along with his wife, Rose, and their two grown children, Francis and Clare. The narrative is set against the backdrop of an Australia deeply divided over the Tampa Affair: in August of 2001, Prime Minister John Howard's government refused permission for the Norwegian freighter, MV Tampa, carrying 433 rescued refugees, to enter Australian waters, triggering a massive controversy. The story opens in 1967 with a flashback to new immigrant Antonio's happier days building his first home, but immediately hints at doomsdaylike changes to come. As Castagna writes, "He is not yet the Antonio Martone" whose "own existential crisis coincides with that of a nation." From there, the story jumps to 2001 and into the various perspectives of Antonio's grown son, daughter, and wife. Injured in a construction accident caused by untrained migrant workers, Antonio struggles with his newfound hatred of recent immigrants, eventually committing an act that makes him the unintended poster child for the anti-immigration movement. This is a haunting and compassionate consideration of the question of who can and cannot come into a country.
