Although this nominally takes place over the course of a single day in Danny's life, it's about so much more. A Sri Lankan Tamil emigre to Australia, he's fallen off the grid of sorts and is living under the radar doing menial jobs when he realizes that Prakash murdered his girlfriend Radha. Does he go to the police with what he knows? Here's the problem- and it's one undocumented people face daily around the world- doing so will bring down Danny's very fragile house of cards. He's hidden in the shadows, even from his own girlfriend who does not know his status, for four years. His story spools out slowly and meditatively over the course of this slim novel. This hits important and topical themes and does them in a way that should make you think. Thanks to net galley for the ARC. For fans of literary fiction.

I’m not entirely sure how to feel about this one. Certainly the premise is enticing: an undocumented immigrant from Sri Lanka currently living in Australia is a potential witness in a violent crime. This isn’t just a possibility, but a reality for many from undocumented communities all over the world. Fear of deportation or imprisonment is so great that they are wary to go to the authorities when they themselves are victims of crimes, and therefore are more likely to be victims than perpetrators.

But the execution of this idea is a little all over the place for me. We follow a man, Danny, who is slowly unraveling in trying to decide what to do with the information he possesses. We get flashbacks to various times in his life, such as his time back home in Sri Lanka or spending time in Australia with his girlfriend, and get the context for whatever small decision he’s about to make. As a rule, he almost always picks the one that makes the least sense. I haven’t read White Tiger or anything else by Aravind Adiga, so I’m not sure if this is his writing style or not, but I found it hard to get a grip on Danny. I really don’t know if he’s generally unstable or if it’s a heightened sense of dread around the murder or the just the sheer panic of deportation that makes him so erratic, but it was hard to connect to.

I found Adiga’s commentary on the differences between legal and illegal immigrants as well as between immigrants and their first generation descendants to be really fascinating. It’s something you don’t think about, being a white person in a white-majority country, but a reality for millions of people worldwide. Danny is just trying to exist and scrape by, but even the smallest thing that we take for granted could be an immense obstacle for him. In these comparisons and reflections I feel like the novel excelled.

Overall, I think it was a little too disjointed for me. Though it’s only 272 pages, so much seemed to ramble on and on. The entire plot only spans one day in Danny’s life and he spends so much time going over the same things again and again. It’s not quite a thriller, but somehow left me feeling anxious. Still, it could be worth it to some readers who find the subject matter interesting.

Thank You to NetGalley and Scribner Publishing for gifting me with an ARC of Amnesty by Aravind Adiga. In exchange for the ARC I offer my unbiased opinion.

A clever satire written by Booker winner Aravind Adiga. Danny, a Tamil man from Sri Lanka, enters Australia on a student visa only to discover his university is a scam. He chooses to stay in the country knowing without attending school he is considered illegal and if caught will face deportation. Danny, honest and hardworking becomes a house cleaner trying to constantly stay one step ahead of the legal system.
When he becomes privy to information regarding a murder he must decide to stay quiet (which keeps him safe) or report a crime (which jeopardizes his status). A moral conundrum ensues. Great for bookclub discussion.

If you are a reader who does not enjoy characters having inner monologues this book will probably irk you. Not heavy on action, set in the span of one day, this story is one hundred percent character driven. I really enjoyed the setting though, as Sydney is very much a character.

It's all about rules, so says Dhananjaya "Danny" Rajaratnam, an illegal immigrant from Sri Lanka. "Many of us flee chaos to come here. Aussies are an optimistic and methodical people...Understanding the concept of the rule that cannot be broken is vital to adjusting here." "Even before he got to Australia, Danny was practicing becoming Australian...[Danny must] eliminate the tics that Tamils bring to their English."

Securing a student visa for an overpriced "ripoff" of a university in Australia, Danny made the honest mistake of overstaying his visa after dropping out of school. Australia had"zero tolerance" for illegals. Now he lived in a storeroom above Tommo's Sunburst Grocery in Glebe. Danny's room was furnished with items discarded by others. He was allowed to use a small electric heater for up to forty minutes a night. A portion of his daily earnings as a cleaner must be paid to "middleman" Tommo. Armed with his "astronaut" backpack containing a vacuum, and a plastic bag of cleaning supplies, he traveled to his first job of the day.

Danny was rattled. While cleaning an apartment in Erskineville, three policemen ran up the stairs to the floor above. What a relief! They were not looking for Danny! Seeing increased police presence, he noticed that the window at house #5 across the street was open and Radha Thomas's husband, Mark was leaning out, his face red from crying. Mark had been informed that the body of his wife, Radha had been found floating in a creek, weighted down by a rock filled leather jacket. Danny strongly suspected he knew who committed the murder. "Does a person without rights still have responsibilities?...Should he come forward with knowledge of the crime and risk deportation?...Should he say nothing and let justice go undone?"

"Amnesty" by Aravind Adiga takes place over the course of one day. Danny struggles over whether to keep a low profile or expose a suspect. "He is a "brown man in a white man's city...Easiest thing in the world becoming invisible to white people who don't see you any way; but the hardest thing is becoming invisible to brown people who will see you no matter what." This reader was a little disappointed that the psychological tension wavered taking too long to play out. Author Adiga, however, created a timely, realistic tome concerning the difficulties faced by nameless people attempting to stay under the radar in a foreign country. The goal: survival.

Thank you Scribner and Net Galley for the opportunity to read and review "Amnesty".

Instead of American Dirt, give Amnesty a try. A unique twist on an immigration story (Australia) that will have you turning pages at the edge of your seat.

I will start by saying that this is an extremely well written story. With all the talk of books and the immigrant stories, I beg you try this one. However there is one caveat, this is not the American immigrant story, this memorable story takes place in Australia where they have some of the more stricter immigration laws.

This is the story of Danny who is a cleaner in Australia trying to survive. He came there to escape Sri Lanka, but you will find out that he messed up royally by the method that he came into the country. He wants to seek asylum but because of that mistake he is pretty much screwed.

Towards the beginning of this story he realizes that one of his former clients was murdered and he is pretty sure he knows who did this. This begins a bizarre game of cat and mouse between Danny and who he suspects is the murderer.

Let me be very clear, this is not a psychological thriller, but it has that same feeling of you just don’t want to put it down. More than that, the author tells this heartbreaking story of a person, who is just trying to survive by fitting in and not crossing paths with the police. The author poses the moral question of right and wrong.

This was great read and I totally expect to see this on many awards lists.

Thank you NetGalley and Scribner for an Advanced Reader’s Copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This was not for me. The writing felt very disjointed and the story did not flow in a smooth fashion. Too much confusing internal dialogue of Danny's. The plot was too obvious and the lead up just felt forced and long.

Thank you to @scribnerbooks and @netgalley for my copy of this novel. The premise surrounds “Danny,” an immigrant from Sri Lanka living illegally in Australia and who works as a cleaner. He finds out one of his clients has been murdered and he believes he knows who did it. Should he tell the police and risk deportation? This idea really intrigued me and there were parts of the story I was invested in but other parts seemed disjointed and confusing. I also thought it would be more about the murder aspect but it was more about the internal thoughts that Danny had in this one particular day. Even though this did not work as well for me as I had hoped, I liked the author’s voice and want to check out his #bookerprize winning novel, The White Tiger. Posted on Instagram @carolinehoppereads and goodreads

This is a very peculiar, weird little book. Adiga is an Indian writer whose debut novel The White Tiger won him the Man Booker Prize and comparisons to Mohsin Hamid and other modern Indian authors. This feels like a drastic departure from that grand political and social commentary - take all of the weirdness of The White Tiger and multiply it by a thousand, and you'll have Amnesty.

In Amnesty, Adiga writes about a Tamil man—Dhananjaya Rajaratnam, who goes by Danny—living as an "illegal" immigrant in Australia. He was denied refugee status but never left, and now works as a house cleaner for various homes in Sydney. He's terrified of being caught and lives his entire small life on the fringe, underground, hidden away from prying eyes. It's fantastic the things we take for granted as "legal" people. It's scary how much has to be hidden for those who aren't.

One day, as he's cleaning a house, Danny discovers that there's been a murder. The victim is one of his other clients, House #3, Radha Thomas. When he learns more info about her murder on the local news, he immediately realizes that her murderer is very likely the man she was having an affair with, a fellow client, House #4. Danny has this very valuable information, but knows that if he takes it to the police, he will surely be interrogated, caught, and deported - and they might not even believe the information he has to share.

This is a fascinating plot, but it doesn't even begin to describe the weirdness of the book. It's written in extreme stream-of-consciousness, and Danny is a very observant, unconventionally intelligent, pop-culture sponge with a short attention span. The thoughts bounce around like electrons in an atom. One sentence: story from childhood, then boom! Memory of cleaning Radha's house while she was having an affair. Wham! He's almost missed the train to his next client's house. Whoop, he needs to get a gift for his vegan girlfriend. How about a cactus? This book is only about 180 pages long, but it feels so, so much longer considering this wacky and confusing writing style, as well as the fact that Danny simply avoids making decisions, including the MOST IMPORTANT DECISION in the book, for way, way too long. It's infuriating.

Perhaps this will go down as one of those confusing, seemingly poorly written books that is later studied in high schools (see: The Sound and the Fury or Ulysses) - this reminds me a lot of those two). But this one just wasn't for me.

Adiga's protagonist in AMNESTY is Dhananjaya Rajaratnam from Sri Lanka. Dhananjaya goes by the name Danny. For the past three years, he has lived in Sydney, Australia. Danny paid a large sum of money (most of the money came from his father's savings) to enroll in a dodgy college that recruited in Sri Lanka.Danny lasted three weeks at the college; he met up with a Japanese Brazilian guy named Abe and started working with him at odd jobs trying to get enough to live on and pay back his father.

AA has written an elaborate story about the life of a refugee, one of the millions of invisible people in our world. Danny is in Australia, but he could be a person we don't notice in any city in the world. He is 'brown' which brings myriad assumptions about him from every person he meets or crosses in the street. Danny's hopes and dreams are similar to most of ours if we are not wealthy in this strangely prosperous world of 2020. AA, in his reference to tree canopies and birds, and bats, puts the reader above the entire melodrama that plays out. As a reader, I asked myself many times what Danny should do in the moral dilemma he finds himself in. I was breathless, wondering what would happen to this knowledgeable and kind man, a man who wanted what we all want: freedom and equality. Aravind Adiga has written a brilliant novel about the state of the world we currently live in, an essential book for everyone to read.

Thank you to Aravind Adiga, Scribner, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this ARC.

Billed as "..riveting, suspenseful, and exuberant..." I found it none of the above. Sadly.

Danny, an illegal immgrant from Sri Lanka goes legally to Sydney, Australia on a student visa and outstays his legality. [the section on Mackenzie College and of his enrolling there, etc. was interesting.] Danny, who recently put gold highlights in his hair, now lives in constant fear of his status. He's a housecleaner who travels with his vacuum, lives in a grocery storeroom, and is extorted by his "landlord"/boss [he also works there]. His life is one of lies--trying to covering his illegality and stay under the radar, He lies to his employers and to his vegan girlfriend, Sonja, a nurse--who he met through a dating app.

There are some flashbacks/glimpses of his past life in Sri Lanka--and Dubai--and why he felt the need to leave his homeland.

The novel takes place in one day but it felt like years!

One of Danny's clients is murdered and he thinks he knows who did it. But, if he goes to the police he fears he will be found out and then deported.

I did enjoy the observations from the immigrant's perspective and the Australian references/comparisons--especially to someone of another skin color. And of life in Sydney.

Certainly illegal immigrants are a timely topic. And I vividly felt Danny's paranoia. BUT. I was never engaged. And, being a former bureaucrat, I had a disconnect over the language of a letter to Danny on his change of status. Admittedly, I not familiar with Australian bureaucratese, but this just did not ring true as an official communication.

The writing was fine. But i was mostly bored.

I received this book from Scribner and Netgalley free of charge, in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Danny is an illegal immigrant from Sri Lanka. He arrived in Sydney with a student visa. However, after making a foolish decision to drop out of college and to not return home, he is now trying his best to be invisible. He has established himself as a cleaner, as well as a stocker in the small grocery store in which he lives. He has a girlfriend, Sonja, who does not know that he's illegal.

Danny has numbers for the houses that he cleans. He has just finished with house number four when he sees police in the hallway. He closes the door and listens to what is going on in the hallway. He discovers that one of his previous clients, Radha - house numbers five and six - has been murdered. Her body has been found in a creek, wrapped in a leather jacket, with stones in the pockets to weight the body down. Danny knows that Radha has been having an affair on her husband, Mark, for years. He knows who her lover is and that he wears a red leather jacket. He accidently dials house number six, which Prakash - Radha's secret lover - is living. When Prakash answers the phone and recognizes Danny's voice, it starts a back and forth between the two. Prakash knows that Danny knows he killed Radha. He also lets Danny know that he knows he's an illegal immigrant. Therefore, if Danny turns in Prakash, Prakash will tell the authorities that Danny is illegal. So telling on Prakash is telling on himself. Will he do the right thing and turn Prakash in to the authorities, or will he stay quiet in order to save his own tail?

This book was a hard read. I had difficulties staying due to the way the book jumps around. I felt for Danny and the situation that he was in. I can't imagine being in his position, not only as an illegal immigrant but knowing the victim as well as the murderer. Being torn between doing the right thing and ruining his own life, or doing the wrong thing and continuing along with his life as it has been would not be a desirable position.

I gave this book three stars due to the writing style. I felt that it could have been more organized and therefore, it would have been an easier read.

Aravind Adiga is a name that should be better known. His novels offer up to the minute examinations of the current world view from the point of view of what he refers to as southern Asians, and in this case, the plight and moral dilemma of a young Sri Lankan Tamil expat trying to gain a visa in Australia. With all that is happening in the United States these days regarding potential immigrants who have something to contribute and being denied access or hunted down and deported, it is eyeopening to learn that Australia employs similar tactics.

Danny has been trying to subsist under the radar for almost four years now. After leaving the college that was a scam operation, thus invalidating his student status, he has been living in a stockroom of a grocery, paying usurous rent to the owner, and making a living as a trustworthy house cleaner. Always with an eye on his back, he juggles all aspects of his life trying so hard to fit in and be invisible at the same time. When one of his clients is murdered and he knows whodunnit, he faces a moral dilemma of whether or not to squeal and thus expose himself facing possible deportation. Danny's story spins out over the course of a single day with his history told via flashbacks. A welcome and informative addition to Mr. Adiga's body of work.

I thought I would like this book. It has a great, timely premise, and I liked Adiga’s “White Tiger” very much. But this one was just too disjointed and confusing for me.

Amnesty is a captivating, emotional, and passionate novel about the struggle to make your life better against overwhelming odds. What do you do when you are unwanted in your homeland but also unwanted in another country? This is the plight of Danny, who is an illegal immigrant in Australia who is originally from Sri Lanka. For Danny, doing the right thing is proving to be very complicated even though he knows exactly what the right thing is. I think the author did a fantastic job of representing this way of life and it’s dehumanizing effects. It takes a serious look at the subjects of immigration, race, fear, decisions and social responsibilities. This is a well written, timely and important work of fiction. I highly recommend it. I would like to thank Netgalley, the publisher and the author for providing me with an advance reader copy in exchange for my honest and unbiased opinion.

A young illegal Sri Lankan immigrant in Sydney has a dilemma - should he make a call to the police about key information he has about a murder? What will it do to his future? What should he do - right or wrong? This is the story of Danny - who cleans homes for a living. Having no papers, no status, no nothing in the city of Sydney, he lives his life furtively, secretly, and is taken advantage of by his employer. But he longs to belong, he works hard, lives in a grocery storeroom, does a great job with cleaning for his clients, and so wants to become a legal immigrant. But one of his customers has a dark secret - she lives a double life with her lover, pulling the wool over her husband’s eyes. She allows Danny to be part of her secret life and together the three of them make a motley crew. But then she is found dead, and to his horror, Danny realizes who has murdered her. Now begins the cat and mouse game with the killer and Danny’s dilemma on what he should do. The book moves back and forth between the current day and the past as we learn of Danny’s circumstances and how he got to where he is in the present - the day after the murder has taken place. The book is about decisions, about immigration, about race, and about life. My fourth Adiga book and it’s in the middle - a decent read, but not on the scale of The White Tiger, which I loved. Still worth the read on issues that are current and top of mind. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book.

For international reading purposes this was ideal. A book by an Indian author, set in Australia with a plot revolving around a Sri Lankan immigrant. Plus I’m always interested in what sort of authors win Booker Prize and this one did, albeit for previous work. Amnesty is a book that took 5 years to complete and its deceptively slim volume conceals a very serious meditation on the subject of immigration and social responsibilities. It is, in general, a fascinating question…What does a society owe a person? What does a person owe their society? What is the set of obligations that weaves the fabric of a cohesive social construct? But here it’s made all the more complicated because the protagonist is in the country illegally, a persona non grata, someone whom Australian government declared unwanted, denied legal protection and is therefore existing on the very fringes of society (cash jobs, sketchy living accommodations, etc.) all while trying desperately to fit in. In my opinion the author did a terrific job of representing this way of life and the dehumanizing effects of it, the daily anxiety, the myriad of small and not so small indignities, the constant fear, the lack of security and safety nets and so on. The scams meant to take advantage of those desperate to leave their own country to try to improve their circumstances, it’s how our protagonist, Danny, eventually ends up working at a cleaner instead of getting and using a college education. And then there’s the moral dilemma that this novel is built on…one day Danny becomes aware of a murder of one of his clients and realizes that another client of his might have had something to do with it. These are the people he was fairly close to as far as employer/employee relationships go, so it puts him in an awkward, terrible really, position. To tell the truth would mean not only to turn in someone he knows, but also to risk deportation. And so Danny’s day (the entire novel takes place mostly in one day, outside of flashbacks, backstories, etc.) becomes an elaborate game of the…whatever Australian predator/prey animal analog might be…where the roles are constantly switching as does the power. Doing the right thing is proving to be very complicated, even for a man who knows exactly what the right thing is. It’s one of those life changing character defining moments in a person’s life. The arm on the cover isn’t waving, it’s reaching out to grab a lifeline. And if I wanted to go further with the cover metaphors, which I’m not sure I do, the colored rings are meant to represent the multiethnic society that Danny is so desperate to really belong to…but no, that’s just…enough of interpreting the cover design. Suffice it to say the story is important, timely and interesting, although I somehow didn’t find it as compelling as it obviously was meant to be. The writing was very good, though not quite for me, so it ended up being the sort of book I intellectually appreciated instead of emotionally engaging with it. Something about the writing and I can’t quite put a finger on what it was. The ending might have had something to do with it. Or maybe the certain level of frustration with the main interaction’s dynamics. But at any rate, objectively, this was a pretty good and certainly worthy read. Thanks Netgalley.

Another great book from this author. Thanks for the review copy, I really appreciate it. Looking forward to more books by Adiga.

As for other reviewers, this book started out very slow for me. Ultimately, I did not finish this novel and marked it DNF.

Amnesty, like a lot of Aravind Adiga's novels, is about the struggle to make one's life better against usually insurmountable odds. Danny, an undocumented immigrant from Sri Lanka, is scraping by in Sydney after being denied refugee status. His days consist of cleaning houses, meeting up with his girlfriend whenever he can, and dodging anyone he thinks might be an authority figure. It is exhausting, but he does not want to leave Australia without the option of coming back.

One morning, Danny learns that one of his former clients has been murdered. From details he hears on the news, he suspects that the murderer is another former client, the woman's lover. He spends the rest of the day debating with himself whether to come forward and most likely be deported, or to keep quiet and let the murderer walk free.

I gave this book three stars instead of four mainly because I could sense Adiga being the puppetmaster, if that makes sense. Namely, Danny is not stupid, but he makes some dumb decisions that must be made in order for there to be a plot. For instance, he spends time with very unpleasant people who he must realize openly mock and look down on him, but he chooses to stay. Danny is portrayed as a people-pleaser, sure, but surely not to this extent! But Adiga does do a fantastic job depicting Danny's agonized state of mind, showing us how little he has to gain by coming forward and everything to lose.