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Rating: 
Summary: The stink of oppression
Review: Intentionally or not, Thomas Keneally has written a novel justifying the overthrow of Iraq's Saddam Hussein and gives one reason to wonder why so many leftists enthusically support the rule of tyrants.
This is a story of life in an anonymous nation where Great Uncle, his family and satraps rule with an iron hand. A custodian responsible for one Great Uncle's palace swimming pools is hanged because the chlorine isn't properly adjusted. Great Uncle's son is depicted as a sadistic monster. Does all this sound familiar?
Alan Sheriff has Anglicized his name while he sits in a refugee detention camp. Bit by bit, he tells his story to a writer who has befriended him.
Once noted as an upcoming writer in his native land, Sheriff tells the story of life under Great Uncle. He and his wife, a successful film and television actress, keep company with a salon of the nation's artists and writers. Great Uncle tells the producer of his wife's soap opera that her role must change to glorify the sacrifices of the nation's war dead, a war that Great Uncle pursued at all costs. Sherriff's wife quits instead, fearing the wrath of Great Uncle and the government he controls.
Sarah, Sherriff's wife dies of an untimely stroke. Perhaps this could have been prevented had not other nations imposed an embargo on Great Uncle's nation because of his invasion of a neighbor and suppression - with chemical weapons - of internal dissidents.
Sherriff has just completed a new novel when Sarah dies. His American publisher's advance and expected royalties would have supported he and his wife for a long time, perhaps even allowing them to escape the country.
In grief, Sherriff buries the manuscript with his wife. It is hers, he thinks. He cannot share the effort the world.
Great Uncle calls upon Sherriff to ghostwrite a novel for him . . . and that's where the story really begins and I will not describe it.
Fear permeates every page of this tragic story. The fear of not knowing what any day will bring. The fear of saying the wrong word to the wrong person and dying for the mistake. This is a story of what it is like to live everyday in a prison. Diplomats cluck-cluck and ythe people suffer.
Keneally has a knack like Orwell's for putting the reader into an asphyxiating environment. You cannot make it through this novel without having your chest tighten . . . and then thinking of how horrible it must be to live in such a country. I don't know what Keneally's intent was, but he definitely makes the argument that allowing tyrants to remain unmolested is a crime against humanity.
Jerry
Rating:
Summary: Passionate polemic
Review: "It's a truism almost embarrassing to repeat," begins Thomas Keneally's newest novel, "that a particular government might find it suitable to have an enemy-in-the-midst . . . whom they can point out to the populace as a threat. And from that threat, only this party . . . can save the innocent sleep of the citizenry." There has been a marked lack of solid fiction that directly concerns the twenty-first century. Aside from a passing reference to 9/11 in English author Iain Banks's Dead Air, major works of fiction set directly in this turbulent era have yet to be written. Keneally is the ideal novelist to bring such themes to life. The Australian author has never shied away from unsettling subjects in his decades as a writer, having tackled the destruction of aboriginal culture in The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, and Nazi atrocities in his Booker Award-winning Schindler's Ark (more popularly known as Schindler's List). In The Tyrant's Novel, Keneally brings his incise commentary and deep compassion to a fables of artistic freedom and moral uncertainty. Inspired by his visits to the Villawood refuge detention centre in Australia, Keneally exposes the humanity that exists under tremendous oppression, and more strikingly, the inhumanity with which refugees from such countries are treated. The Tyrant's Novel is largely set in an anonymous Middle Eastern country sweating under a ferocious dictator known simply as Great Uncle. He wishes to publish a book in the Western world that will display, as he says, "the suffering of my people, and their patriotic inventiveness in the face of sanctions." Conscripting a writer to pen the tale, Great Uncle allows him thirty days to deliver a novel that will "drive a stake through the American administration's embargoes on our oil and the imposed sanctions." The writer, grief-stricken after a personal tragedy, unthinkingly accepts the proposal, as he had been planning suicide in the near future. Yet as the enormity of the task sets in, his past complicity in Great Uncle's corrupt regime becomes apparent, as does the risk of death both he and his friends face should he fail. Keneally makes a bold decision, giving all the characters Anglo-Saxon names rather than the more expected Middle Eastern names. By striving to abolish any pre-conceived of notions of culture or attitudes, Keneally brings Western readers closer to the suffering of the characters, creating a familiar bond that heightens the tragedy of his story.
This should not be dismissed as mere polemic. Using a precise, suspenseful plot worthy of a thriller, Keneally delivers both a condemnation of such regimes and a moving account of people trying to live as best they can. As the writer contemplates defection, Keneally skilfully underscores the absolute nature of such a step, the complete withdrawal from the life one knows to an existence completely unimaginable. The Tyrant's Novel is an altogether remarkable work, an important, raging story of Orwellian government and personal revelations. Touching on issues of love, loyalty, artistic compromise, and political ignorance on both sides, Keneally has crafted his finest work in years.
Rating:
Summary: The master is restored
Review: Allan Sheriff, circled by wire in a desolate place, has a story to tell. Actually, he has two stories: one, his own, describing the life of a writer in Hussein's Baghdad and the other with the same theme. The difference is that the first tells the story of the second. Why is Sheriff fenced in at a remote location of almost indescribeable desolation? What abominable crime has put him there? In answering these questions, Thomas Keneally has returned to the top rank of novelists. He excels again with this modern tale of international politics, survival in an oppressive regime, and personal tragedy. This is among the finest of Keneally's works. Sheriff, a reputable writer, is recruited by Iraq's Great Uncle to post a message to the world. The "sanctions" imposed by the victors of the First Gulf War have brought poverty, lack of food and water and depleted medical facilities to their country. The whims of an arbitrary government, the absolutist nature of the leaders - already a dynasty in the making, and needless casualties from a meaningless war are minimal when contrasted to the universal suffering caused by curtailment of the oil exports. Great Uncle wants Sheriff to expose this injustice through a novel depicting conditions. Sheriff, who might have been willing and able to perform this feat, is afflicted by a more personal crisis - the loss of his wife Sarah. "Alan"? "Sarah"? This couple is close friends with Matt McBrien and Andrew Kennedy. Are these names typical of a Middle Eastern people? Keneally deftly arabesques away from pigeon-holing these people and their circumstances as "Arabs" or even Muslims. In depicting Sheriff's relations with "Mrs Carter", for example, Keneally shows the universality of a mother's grief, the shameful machinations of a government engaged in useless and costly war, and the mixed feelings of soldiers. He doesn't want to distance his characters from the reader - and the use of Anglo-Celtic names in a novel about a suffering people brings us closer to their realities. With his vivid, expressive style, Keneally uses Sheriff to guide us through the harsh world of a despotic regime. Whatever his faults, Hussein's Iraqi people was the true victim of a higher level of despotism - trade embargoes and external demands by international agencies. Keneally describes a nation living on the edge of survival. The people may have the Great Uncle's Blue Overalls at their doorstep, but they know it wasn't the Great Uncle that cut off their drinking water or intercepted the medicines. The reader can always rely on Thomas Keneally for stories of intense feeling and wide interest. He surpasses many of his earlier works with this modern story. That the "Coalition of the Willing" have launched a crusade against the Great Uncle doesn't reduce the value of this book. Keneally uses Sheriff to expose many facets of Iraqi life. His wit and sardonic humour are more pointed here than any previous work. Keneally's sense of justice is monumental. It's a sense to be admired - better, to be emulated. He knows there are no simple answers to human questions, and he displays that view in this exemplary book. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
Rating:
Summary: The master is restored
Review: Allan Sheriff, circled by wire in a desolate place, has a story to tell. Actually, he has two stories: one, his own, describing the life of a writer in Hussein's Baghdad and the other with the same theme. The difference is that the first tells the story of the second. Why is Sheriff fenced in at a remote location of almost indescribeable desolation? What abominable crime has put him there? In answering these questions, Thomas Keneally has returned to the top rank of novelists. He excels again with this modern tale of international politics, survival in an oppressive regime, and personal tragedy. This is among the finest of Keneally's works. Sheriff, a reputable writer, is recruited by Iraq's Great Uncle to post a message to the world. The "sanctions" imposed by the victors of the First Gulf War have brought poverty, lack of food and water and depleted medical facilities to their country. The whims of an arbitrary government, the absolutist nature of the leaders - already a dynasty in the making, and needless casualties from a meaningless war are minimal when contrasted to the universal suffering caused by curtailment of the oil exports. Great Uncle wants Sheriff to expose this injustice through a novel depicting conditions. Sheriff, who might have been willing and able to perform this feat, is afflicted by a more personal crisis - the loss of his wife Sarah. "Alan"? "Sarah"? This couple is close friends with Matt McBrien and Andrew Kennedy. Are these names typical of a Middle Eastern people? Keneally deftly arabesques away from pigeon-holing these people and their circumstances as "Arabs" or even Muslims. In depicting Sheriff's relations with "Mrs Carter", for example, Keneally shows the universality of a mother's grief, the shameful machinations of a government engaged in useless and costly war, and the mixed feelings of soldiers. He doesn't want to distance his characters from the reader - and the use of Anglo-Celtic names in a novel about a suffering people brings us closer to their realities. With his vivid, expressive style, Keneally uses Sheriff to guide us through the harsh world of a despotic regime. Whatever his faults, Hussein's Iraqi people was the true victim of a higher level of despotism - trade embargoes and external demands by international agencies. Keneally describes a nation living on the edge of survival. The people may have the Great Uncle's Blue Overalls at their doorstep, but they know it wasn't the Great Uncle that cut off their drinking water or intercepted the medicines. The reader can always rely on Thomas Keneally for stories of intense feeling and wide interest. He surpasses many of his earlier works with this modern story. That the "Coalition of the Willing" have launched a crusade against the Great Uncle doesn't reduce the value of this book. Keneally uses Sheriff to expose many facets of Iraqi life. His wit and sardonic humour are more pointed here than any previous work. Keneally's sense of justice is monumental. It's a sense to be admired - better, to be emulated. He knows there are no simple answers to human questions, and he displays that view in this exemplary book. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
Rating:
Summary: A Five Star Treat, But It Doesn't Eclipse Schindler's Ark
Review: I've been a longtime fan of Thomas Keneally and I was really happy when I heard he was going to publish a new book. So happy, I bought the book when I was in London not too long ago. I've read that Keneally considers this, his twenty-sixth book, to be his very best, eclipsing even the great SCHLINDER'S ARK. THE TYRANT'S NOVEL takes place in an unnamed Middle Eastern country and revolves around a dictator known only as Great Uncle, although it seems clear to me that Great Uncle has been modeled after Saddam Hussein. Keneally, in interviews, has, in fact, admitted that he modeled his dictator after Saddam. Great Uncle wants to write his memoirs but he's a psychopath, not a writer, so he recruits author Alan Sheriff to ghost write the book for him, a book he hopes will win him fame and favor among all the very best literary circles. Sheriff has been living in a detention center for refugees in Australia after having escaped the Middle Eastern country of his birth in, of all things, an oil barrel. Life for Alan (yes, he's Middle Eastern despite his distinctly Western name) in the detention center really isn't much better than it had been in his homeland. In face, in some ways, it's worse. Alan tells us about his experiences ghost writing for Great Uncle and life in the Australian detention center in a story-within-a-story, a narrative device that I almost always love and one that I thought worked very well in this book. Both Alan Sheriff and Great Uncle are interesting and believable characters and Keneally does a very good job bringing both to life. Both have their quirks and those quirks only serve to make them more human. Sheriff insists on translating all his own books even though his translated prose is, more often than not, awkward. Great Uncle insists that everyone in his presence, even those who are going to be executed, be bathed thoroughly until they are squeaky clean. THE TYRANT'S NOVEL, at just about three hundred pages, is a short book for Keneally. While I appreciate it when an author doesn't ramble on and fill his or her book with unnecessary details and meaningless subplots that go nowhere, THE TYRANT'S NOVEL seems to be a little too lean. I think, had Keneally given us more of the small, everyday details of Great Uncle's life, it would have been a lot easier to believe in him and in his desire to become a literary wonder. As it is, there is a rushed and hurried feeling to the book, as though Keneally were writing under some pressure. This really didn't work for me and I disliked this quality of the book. Keneally, himself, has said that THE TYRANT'S NOVEL is his favorite book and the one he, himself, considers his masterpiece. It's a very well written book, despite its "rushed" quality and one that's very engrossing, but for me, despite the fact that it's a five star treat, it doesn't even come close to equaling or eclipsing SCHINDLER'S ARK. And, really, considering the monumental achievement that constitutes SCHINDLER'S ARK, that's not bad at all. I would definitely recommend THE TYRANT'S NOVEL to fans of Keneally who are sure to love it. Anyone interested in the situation in the Middle East might like this book as well, even though it is a work of fiction and certainly doesn't represent the facts as we know them. It's a marvelous character study of a psychopath and the displaced writer who comes to know him all too well.
Rating:
Summary: Keneally in award-winning form with serious political novel.
Review: In this novel within a novel, Australian author Thomas Keneally returns to the political themes which won him prizes for The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, Voices from the Forest, and Schindler's Ark. Keneally has always been at his best depicting ordinary people facing extraordinary pressures, especially from governments bent on totalitarian rule, and this contemporary allegory is no exception. Taking place in an unnamed oil-rich country in the Middle East ruled by a tyrant who calls himself Great Uncle, the novel centers on a man calling himself "Alan Sheriff," a short story writer given one month to write an "autobiographical novel" for which Great Uncle will take full credit. Sheriff, we learn in the opening chapter, is telling his story to a western journalist from a detention camp in an unnamed desert country, where he has languished for three years.
Keneally increases the impact and universality of the story through his clever use of western names. As Alan Sheriff tells the journalist, it is important for his credibility in the west that he be like a man you'd meet on the street, which is much easier with a name like Alan--"not, God help us, Said and Osama and Saleh. If we had Mac instead of Ibn." Alan believes his "saddest and silliest story" will interest Americans, despite the fact that his country and the US are now enemies.
Through Alan's story, the reader meets Mrs. Douglas, whose nephew, not careful enough of the pH level of Great Uncle's swimming pool, has been shot and hanged from the ramparts; Mrs. Carter, whose son has been missing for six years; Alan's beloved wife, Sarah Manners, an actress who has become unemployable; Matt McBride, another writer who becomes head of the Cultural Commission where he works for Great Uncle; and Louise James, an American who would like to get Sheriff to come to Texas as a visiting professor. All these characters contribute to a stunning conclusion as Sheriff tries to write the required novel.
Easily the best Keneally novel in over a decade, this serious and thoughtful novel has significant political ramifications. The characters are "ordinary people," much like the rest of us, caught in extreme situations, and Keneally builds up enormous suspense as the long tentacles of the tyrant grab everyone in their path. Though most readers will recognize the unnamed country and the tyrant, it is a tribute to Keneally that their specific identities are totally irrelevant to his themes and plot. The author makes it clear that a government's manipulation of the people's perceptions through staged events is not limited to the Third World. Mary Whipple
Rating: 
Summary: A timely fable revealing creativity and innovation.
Review: THE TYRANT'S NOVEL is at once ingenious and innovative in its ability to mirror recent world history events without disclosing vital identities. While reading it is difficult to not think of current geopolitical events. When we first meet protagonist Alan Sheriff he is being held as a political prisoner in an undisclosed Western nation. While being interviewed by journalists Sheriff explains his tale of how he ended up in his current predicament and his former life in an anonymous nation suffering from U.S.-led oil embargo and is ruled by a ruthless dictator. As the narrative unfolds the similarities between Sheriff's home country and Saddam Hussein's Iraq is quite uncanny and difficult to overlook.
Sheriff was once a member of the elite middle class largely unaffected by the devasting economic repercussions of the oil embargo. But despite his social standings he has created a reputation for his literary skill he is ordered by the tyrant to write a novel about the chaos that has burdened his country to be published under the tyrants name and released in time for a forthcoming G7 summit. Sheriff's been provided a very short deadline and in order to complete this unthinkable task he must battle personal demons that plague him.
Thomas Keneally performs a superb job in creating this fast-paced thriller that failed to lose steam at any given time. I was immediately hooked by the opening paragraph and couldn't wait to reach the end. Recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Witty, Clever and Well-Done
Review: Thomas Keneally's The Tyrant's Novel opens in a refugee holding camp of sorts in a Western nation. The initial narrator tells a brief story of meeting one of the refugees held there, Alan Sheriff, who is seeking political asylum and whose story makes up much of this enjoyable novel. Alan was a very successful novelist, with an American publishing contract, in a fictional country that is a thinly-disguised contemporary Iraq. His life is ideal, or as much as that can be when living under a despot's rule, when it pretty much crumbles in front of his eyes. His beloved wife dies suddenly and he is subsequently 'asked' by the Great Uncle, the tyrant of his country (and a dead ringer for Saddam Hussein) to ghostwrite a novel for him. The request is not just for any novel, but one which is so wonderful and moving, one which so exposes the effects that economic sanctions are having on his country that the world's superpowers will be convinced to removed those sanctions. Part of what makes Keneally's novel so wonderful is that it is both a politcal novel and a novel about writing and the creative process. Keneally masterfully, seamlessly blends these two genres into an enjoyable whole. The novel is at once a politcal allegory and a story of symbolic writer's block. It is an excellent, heart-breaking story, well-done and compelling. Enjoy.
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