Celebrating the two year anniversary of my debut novel! Asylum, with its searing critique of Australian refugee policy, its bitter irony, reads like historical fiction. I wrote it in 2013 and things for asylum seekers are much much worse today. I wrote the novel to help raise awareness. I decided there weren’t enough stories out there tackling this issue. That is still the case today. Asylum is semi-autobiographical too. I was a British-born visa overstayer back in 1990 and I had to jump through a lot of hoops to stay here. The only reason I was not deported – I did get a deportation order. I was 6 months pregnant with twins at the time – was because I got married.
Read more about Asylum here.
Grab a copy from Amazon and all good online booksellers.
I’m reposting this fabulous review featured in the July 2015 edition of The Triangle community newspaper.
“Saturday, 20 June saw a wonderful gathering at the Well Thumbed Bookshop, Cobargo NSW, for the launch of Isobel Blackthorn’s latest book, Asylum. Starting the proceedings, Dr Heather O’Connor talked about our most wonderful and recently departed local, Neilma Ganter, found of Four Winds, Mumbulla Foundation and hundreds of other local organisations, who had learned from her father that money was meant to be spent on community, establishing a path of philanthropy in his family.
Dr Rosemary Beaumont then talked about the duality of meaning for the word asylum: a sanctuary, and a prison for the unwanted, along with the fact that 90% of Australians have come from migrant families, from poverty, or have come here to escape unbearable political situations. The movement of people has increased substantially, making the issue of refugees a worldwide issue.
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