Shankari Chandran’s Safe Haven, a gripping and persuasive novel of asylum seekers, reads like an open wound
- Written by Jen Webb, Executive Dean (interim) Faculty of Arts and Design, University of Canberra
Mikael Damkier/ShutterstockThere have been many Australian publications about refugees and asylum seekers. Many are memoir or reportage. Perhaps the best known is Behrooz Boochani’s autobiographical No Friend But the Mountains (2018).
But there is also a body of such narratives written in the form of fiction. Think of Maxine Beneba...

















