Dimensions
156 x 234 x 19mm
An intelligent and politically charged first novel, from a writer mentored by the Nobel Prize-winning author J.M. Coetzee.
What if you saved a man's life? What if that man went on to play a leading part in the bloodiest revolution of modern times?
Ted Whittlemore, a broken-down war correspondent, has washed up in the Concertina Rest Home in Adelaide. But his wandering mind returns again and again to Cambodia in the 1970s and to Khmer Rouge leader Nhem Kiry, known as 'Pol Pot's mouthpiece'. Whittlemore once put his faith in Kiry; in the intervening years he has watched, fascinated and horrified, as the ideals he held dear were translated into limitless violence. As he tries to make sense of what happened, it is as if Kiry's life has become intertwined with his own.
In Figurehead, Patrick Allington takes readers deep into the world of power politics and agents of influence. He enters the worlds of Nhem Kiry and Ted Whittlemore, and with humour, intelligence and an unfailing moral sense, brings them to life. This is a novel about guilt and memory, and the awful distance that separates dreams from reality. It is about those people who, as George Orwell put it, are 'always somewhere else when the trigger is pulled.'
