Amnesia

- Blurb -

Has Gaby, a young Australian activist, declared cyberwar on the United States? (The US Justice Department thinks so.) Or was her computer virus intended only to open the doors of Australia's detention centres? Either way, it has also released the doors of American jails run by the same corporation. Can Gaby be extradited to a country with the death penalty? Enter an outrageous Melbourne property developer, a millionaire patron of left-wing causes who hires a distinguished lawyer for Gaby, and an old mate to write a biography to vindicate her. The old mate is Felix Moore, and to understand her motives he must delve into a new order of social resistance, one owing more to Assange and Snowden than to the event that has fuelled Felix's rage for four decades, the dismissal of Gough Whitlam and his elected government. While Amnesia has its feet in historical events, its storyline is as brilliantly inventive as all Carey's work. Narrator Felix is a disgraced journalist who's unreliable with his facts, known to his fellow journalists as Felix Moore-or-less correct. His grasp of reality is also sometimes unreliable. He is brave, cowardly and funny. 'I had fought the good fight all my life,' he confesses, 'but I had also become an awful creature along the way.' In covering a time span from World War II to the present, he inhabits the intimate lives of multiple other characters ' in short, a quintessentially Careyesque character.