No More Boats

It is 2001, and the Tampa, carrying more than four hundred rescued refugees, is held off the Australian coast while the airwaves warn of an invasion. In Sydney's working-class west, Antonio Martone, who arrived from Italy decades earlier, has lost his job after an accident on a building site. His wife Rose has left to live with their neighbour, his daughter Clare goes off with men she barely knows, and his son spends his days getting stoned among the plants. Increasingly paranoid, Antonio is visited by the ghost of an old friend who tells him to paint an anti-immigration slogan in giant letters on his lawn, and the gesture turns him into an unwilling symbol in the national fight over who may come to Australia.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Genres

Migration, Family, Politics (assigned by AI)

Set in

Australia, 2001

First published

2017

ISBN

9781925336306 (Giramondo, Australia)

9781609455095 (Europa Editions, United States)