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Safe Haven by Shankari Chandran

Jun 2024

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Author: Chandran, Shankari

Category: Fiction & related items

Publisher: Ultimo Press

ISBN: 9781761151279

RRP: 34.99

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Synopsis

The new novel from the Miles Franklin award-winning author of Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens.

It was a beautiful evening. The wind gathered speed, lifting the frangipanis from the grove behind him, pink and yellow petals defying gravity. Beyond the trees, hidden by the foliage and rows of towering palm trees, the detention centre slept fitfully in the heavy summer heat. The palms blocked the ocean gust that now swirled around him, filling his lungs with the taste of temple flowers and salt. It reminded him of home. He took a deep breath, stepped off the escarpment and felt the red sand rush up towards him.

Arriving in Australia seeking asylum, Fina dedicates herself to aiding the refugees who are held in Port Camden, a remote island outpost. Over time she settles into a life within a community of like-minded people, finding a new family, far from her original home. After she speaks out for those being detained, Fina becomes the focus of a media storm that leads to her arrest, and the threat of deportation.

When a security officer dies under suspicious circumstances, Lucky, a special investigator, arrives to uncover the truth. The mystery is tied to Fina’s fate—and the secrets she reveals will divide the town and the nation.

Safe Haven is about displacement and seeking refuge—but ultimately it is a story about finding home—and the lengths you’ll go to find safety and love.

PRAISE FOR SAFE HAVEN

‘Chandran's writing is evocative and studded with beautiful imagery’ –Books + Publishing

PRAISE FOR CHAI TIME AT CINNAMON GARDENS

‘Deftly traversing time, culture and continent to weave a tale of both home and unbelonging, this is truly a novel not to be missed.’ –Maxine Beneba Clarke, author of Foreign Soil and The Hate Race

‘Chandran is an excellent storyteller.’ –The Weekend Australian

‘This is an engaging story that feels both urgent and necessary. It is also a terrific read.’ –The Daily Telegraph

‘this story burns with anger and sings with optimism, sprinkled through with moments of levity and humour.’ –The Canberra Times

‘An engrossing, urgent, warm, wise and utterly, utterly beautiful novel.’ –Emily Maguire, author of An Isolated Incident and Love Objects

‘This is a book that requires concentration and full immersion – but it will reward the reader for that investment.’ –The Guardian

‘a powerful, compassionate novel about friendship, family, community-building, and the racism faced by members of diasporic communities in this country.’ - The AU Review

Shankari Chandran was raised in Canberra, Australia. She spent a decade in London, working as a lawyer in the social justice field. She eventually returned home to Australia, where she now lives with her husband and four children. She is the author of Song of the Sun God, The Barrier and Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens, which won the 2023 Miles Franklin Literary Award.

Our review

At a time when the Australian Government’s processing of asylum seekers remains in the spotlight as one of the harshest in the world, Shankari Chandran’s new novel Safe Haven is very relevant.

It is set during the period when boat arrivals in Australia were at their peak and refugees were routinely detained in offshore detention centres. The novel focuses on Fina, an asylum seeker rescued from a sinking boat who, as a nun, is awarded a special visa in order to support other refugees.

She becomes a source of inspiration to the community of the fictional NSW country town of Hastings where she settles. She commutes back and forth to the remote offshore detention centre of Port Camden to support the detainees there, some of whom arrived with her.

After speaking out to the media about the appalling conditions at the detention centre, Fina’s life is upended when she is violently uprooted from Hastings and returned to Port Camden, under threat of imminent deportation, which would mean certain death. At the centre she becomes drawn into the aftermath of a teenager’s suicide.

Compounding the plot, a security guard is also found dead, but under more suspicious circumstances. When Lucky, an OSI agent, is sent to Port Camden to investigate his death, she uncovers murky connections between the dead guard and several others.

Well written, moving and a persuasive argument against Australia’s dehumanising treatment of those who come in search of safe haven but find the opposite, Chandra’s novel is an impressive follow-up to her Booker Prize winning Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens.

Reviewed by Anne Green

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Shankari Chandran, author Shankari Chandran is an Australian Tamil lawyer and writer. Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens was short-listed for the Miles Franklin Literary Award 2023. Song of the Sun God was long-listed for the International Dublin Literary Award and short-listed for Sri Lanka’s Fairway National Literary Award. The Barrier was short-listed for the Norma K Hemming Award for Speculative Fiction. Song of the Sun God is being adapted for television, starring Bridgerton’s Charithra Chandran (no relation).

Shankari has spent two decades working as a lawyer in the social justice field, on national and international program design and delivery. She continues her work in social impact for an Australian national retailer.

She is based in Sydney, Australia, where she lives with her husband and her four children and explores dispossession and the creation of community through her fiction.

Visit Shankari Chandran’s website