Set in suburban Melbourne, Asylum is a swift read about an Afghan-Australian Muslim family whose ordinary domestic life is abruptly invaded by a teenage fugitive.

Seventeen-year-old Khalid narrates: preoccupied with footy, girls, his phone, his mother’s cooking and the usual irritation of family life, he is hardly preparing for a moral crisis when an armed boy arrives at the house with police closing in.

Wickremesekera uses that collision to test the assumptions built around religion, migration, race and belonging without turning the book into a solemn exercise in “issues.” The novel is driven instead by Khalid’s irreverent adolescent voice and by the contradictions within the family itself. Their faith is sincere but argued with, cultural identity is lived rather than presented as fixed, and hospitality becomes unexpectedly political once sheltering someone carries consequences. The result is a compact piece of Australian migrant fiction interested less in neat cultural opposition than in what happens when different moral systems are forced into the same room.

Palaver / Ethica Projects, Armadale, Victoria, 2015. First Palaver edition. Paperback. Light shelf wear and minor marks to covers; internally clean and firmly bound. Very good condition.