Underground

Underground is a novel by Andrew McGahan, the critically-acclaimed and award-winning author of Last Drinks, Praise and White Earth, the latter of these being the 2005 winner of the Miles Franklin Award. Underground represents a change of pace for McGahan, a novel with a wider political scope that calls to mind science-fiction flavoured literary classics such as 1984 and The Handmaid's Tale. It is also a book that is completely and wholly Australian, dealing with pertinent Australian issues and the sort of things we could be facing in the near future if we aren't careful.

It is the near future in Australia. Leo James is a burnt out entrepeneur and the disowned twin brother of Prime Minister Bernard James, the figurehead of a new right wing Australia. Things have gotten worse and worse for Leo in the new political climate of Australia... ever since Canberra was nuked by terrorists no one has wanted to come to the country for a holiday, which makes it hard for Leo's recently financed Queensland resort. Leo is at the end of his tether, all boozed up and railing insanely at a cyclone, when he is kidnapped by a covert Australian terrorist group known as Great Southern Jihad. But this is only the beginning, he is rescued from the terrorists by the government's troops... and he is then rescued from them by another group, the Australian Underground. The Australian Underground is a nation-wide organisation made up of people from all walks of life who have one thing in common... they miss the old freedom of Australia and want it back.

McGahan's dystopian vision of the land down under is set only four years into the future, but it is very much a changed nation. The nuclear destruction of Canberra has made it possible for the government to waive all sorts of basic human rights... a permenant state of emergency has been declared, all muslims have been rounded up and put into ghettos, almost every major road is blocked off by a security checkpoint, and huge unofficial American military bases dot the landscape. It's an Orwellian nightmare of machiavellian proportions... a bland Prime Minister much like John Howard amasses unheard of amounts of power thanks to the pumped up threat of terrorism, and layers of deception and hypocrisy feed this new order in an all-too-familiar fashion. It's a horrible and realistic vision of a worst case scenario made possible - and the most terrifying aspect of it all is that it's so undeniably and recognisably Australian.

McGahan wisely fills his depressing dystopia with action and wry humour. It's probably an insult to both writers to compare McGahan to Ben Elton but Underground reads like a souped up version of one of Ben Elton's early eco-thrillers, albeit with more balls. It's basically a heartfelt attack on all that's wrong with our country's current political climate... indeed, McGahan writes on his website for the book - "I knew that I couldn’t just write ‘I hate John Howard’ fifty thousand times over, as cathartic as that might have been". This is an entertaining and informative read, educational in the way that all the great dystopian classics are (and incredibly relevant in this neo-conservative, post-9/11 world too). It resonated deeply with me.