New novel by Felicity Castagna, whose previous book, The Incredible Here and Now, won the 2015 Prime Ministers Award for Young Adult Fiction and was shortlisted for the CBCA and NSW Premier's Literary Awards. The subject is very topical. No More Boats tackles the fear of refugees head on, portraying the anxieties of a man who was once a migrant himself, brought to breaking point by the Tampa crisis, when the nation itself is thrown into a xenophobic frame of mind. It is 2001. 438 refugees sit in a boat called Tampa off the shoreline of Australia while the TV and radio scream out that the country is being flooded, inundated, overrun by migrants. Antonio Martone, once a migrant himself, has been forced to retire, his wife has moved in with the woman next door, his daughter runs off with strange men, his deadbeat son is hiding in the garden smoking marijuana. Amidst his growing paranoia, the ghost of his dead friend shows up and commands him to paint 'No More Boats' in giant letters across his front yard. The Prime Minister of Australia keeps telling Antonio that we will decide who comes to this country and the circumstance in which they come, but Antonio's not sure he wants to think about all those things that led him to get on a boat and come to Australia in the first place. A man and a nation unravel together.

No More Boats

Castagna, Felicity

ReadHowYouWant

A “timely and powerful” novel that provides “a haunting and compassionate consideration of the question of who can and cannot come into a country” (Publishers Weekly). Set in Sydney’s working-class western suburbs, No More Boats tells of a family whose unraveling lives collide with a refugee crisis known as the Tampa Affair, when over four hundred refugees were left stranded fifteen miles off the Australian coast. The story revolves around Antonio, an Italian immigrant, his wife, Rose, with a rich back story of her own, and their two children, Nico and Clare―both, in their owns ways, drifting. After a job-related accident forces him into early retirement and the familiar scaffolding of work, family, the immigrant’s dream of betterment, is removed from his life, Antonio’s mind begins to fragment. Manipulated by the media and made vulnerable by his feeling of irrelevance, Antonio commits an act that makes him a lightning rod for the factions that are bitterly at odds over the Tampa Affair . . . A finalist for the Miles Franklin Literary Award in 2018, No More Boats is not only a riveting story of a modern family; it also directly addresses issues that many nations are grappling with―immigration, xenophobia, protectionism, racism, media manipulation, and the precariousness of the working poor―and is “full of timely lessons for those pondering the rise of me-first nationalism throughout the world” (Kirkus Reviews).

Literature & Fiction

Literary

Europa Editions

The Incredible Here and Now

Giramondo

Science Fiction & Fantasy

Fantasy

Giramondo Publishing

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Castagna, Felicity. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Castagna, Felicity