The Tyrant's Novel

In a detention camp where he is neither granted asylum nor readied to be sent back to his native land, a detainee bides his time. He insists on being called Alan Sheriff, a westernization of his given name; he was born in a country that had once been a friend to the United States but is now its enemy. Little else is known about Sheriff until a writer comes to interview him, and he embarks on the unraveling of events that have led to his current state - the basis of which forms a novel within a novel. In a work reminiscent of the classic Fahrenheit 451, Thomas Keneally has written a dazzling story of a man caught between the demands of his government and his impulse to run for his life.