image of person or book cover 8680446590404261843.jpg
Image courtesy of publisher's website.
y separately published work icon Underground single work   novel   thriller   satire  
Issue Details: First known date: 2006... 2006 Underground
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Think ahead five or so years from now, to an Australia transformed by the never-ending war on terror. Canberra has been wiped out in a nuclear attack. There is a permanent state of emergency. Security checkpoints, citizenship tests, identity cards and detention without trial have all become the norm. Suspect minorities have been locked away into ghettos. And worse no one wants to play cricket with us anymore. Enter Leo James burnt-out property developer and black-sheep twin brother of the all powerful Bernard James, Prime Minister of Australia. In an event all too typical of the times, Leo finds himself abducted by terrorists. But this won't be your average kidnapping. Instead, vast and secret forces are at work here, and Leo and his captors are about to embark on a journey into the underworld of a nation gone mad.' (Libraries Australia)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • Crows Nest, North Sydney - Lane Cove area, Sydney Northern Suburbs, Sydney, New South Wales,: Allen and Unwin , 2006 .
      image of person or book cover 8680446590404261843.jpg
      Image courtesy of publisher's website.
      Extent: 294p.
      ISBN: 1741149312, 9781741149319
    • Crows Nest, North Sydney - Lane Cove area, Sydney Northern Suburbs, Sydney, New South Wales,: Allen and Unwin , 2010 .
      image of person or book cover 1190244955304367857.jpg
      Image courtesy of publisher's website.
      Note/s:
      • Ebook.
      ISBN: 9781741763782
Alternative title: Australia Underground
Language: French
    • c
      France,
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,      :       Leméac ,       2008 .
      image of person or book cover 4891134163811995152.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 366p.p.
      ISBN: 9782742794553
    • Arles,
      c
      France,
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,      :       Actes Sud ,       2008 .
      image of person or book cover 4974924133843777416.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 302p.p.
      ISBN: 9782742777914, 2742777911
VIEW PUBLICATION DETAILS FOR ALL VERSIONS ()

Other Formats

  • Sound recording.
  • Dyslexic edition.
Find library holdings on Trove

Works about this Work

The Post-Sovereign Novel : Biopolitical Immunities in Manfred Jurgensen’s The American Brother Michael Austin , 2016 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , 10 August vol. 31 no. 4 2016; 'The Australian government’s responses to the September 11 attacks introduced a new theme into Australian literature. Novels such as Andrew McGahan’s Underground and Richard Flanagan’s The Unknown Terrorist sought to address, in narrative form, threats to the rule of law that arose from a rapidly emerging Western security state. Drawing on the political and juridical framework of liberalism, these novels attacked an Australian political and social milieu that justified the expansion of sovereign power. This essay argues that the liberal framework informing these novels misrecognises the structure of power post-9/11: insofar as it posits an absolute dichotomy between law and sovereignty, the language of liberalism prevents us from thinking right and power concomitantly. This essay reads Manfred Jurgensen’s novel The American Brother through the political philosophy of Roberto Esposito. In doing so, it suggests that a biopolitical account of the post-9/11 security state, in the form of Esposito’s paradigm of immunisation, enables not only a coherent epistemology of contemporary sovereign power, but also opens up a critical approach to literature that thinks outside the limitations of liberal discourse.' (Publication abstract)
Distant Context, Local Colour : Australian ‘Post September 11’ Fiction Jen Webb , 2010 single work criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , Special Issue 2010; 'Australian fiction is, arguably, as diverse as the fiction of any other culture or era. But in a globalised world, though the stories we tell may remain inflected by the local context, they will necessarily be informed by transnational relations and geopolitical events. Like writers in the USA, UK, Afghanistan and elsewhere, some Australian novelists have taken arms against a sea of troubles, and produced work that directly and consciously engages that new genre, the post September 11 novel. Only a small number of Australian novels have been published in this genre - perhaps inevitably, given our distance from the scene - and they can be read as relying on the familiar features of the thriller, the detective, or the citygrrl genres that readers find attractive. However, I will suggest that they do more than this. In a reading of Andrew McGahan's Underground, and Richard Flanagan's The Unknown Terrorist, I will discuss the ways in which a very local 'accent' is coloured by broader forces, and what contributions we can offer, here at the foot of the world, to the ongoing conflicts and human rights abuses in the hemisphere above us.' (Author's abstract)
The Literary Destruction of Canberra : Utopia, Apocalypse and the National Capital Russell Smith , 2009 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , vol. 24 no. 1 2009; (p. 78-94) The article examines the contradictory responses to the national capital in the Australian imagination: planned along utopian lines, Canberra has been seen as a failed utopia, a city 'widely unloved and often derided as the most un-Australian of Australian cities' (78). In seeking to understand this tension, the article examines the literary representation of the capital in some fictional narratives in which 'Canberra is literally or symbolically destroyed', above all in works by McGahan and Halligan.
Government, Media and Power : Terrorism in the Australian Novel Since 9/11 Nathanael O'Reilly , 2009 single work criticism
— Appears in: From Solidarity to Schisms : 9/11 and After in Fiction and Film from Outside the US 2009; (p. 295-315) This chapter examines three Australian novels published since 2001 that address the effects of terrorism on both Australian and Western society: Janette Turner Hospital's Due Preparations for the Plague (2003), Andrew McGahan's Underground (2006), and Richard Flanagan's The Unknown Terrorist (2007). Despite the variety of settings that the novels utilize, they all demonstrate the pervasiveness of terrorism as a dominant political and cultural issue in Australian society since 9/11. Moreover, the novels reveal the relationship between governments and the media, and critique the way that both use terrorism to maintain and expand their power. Turner Hospital's Due Preparations for the Plague, set in the United States, France, and Iraq, examines terrorism, Islamic fundamentalism, national security, intelligence failures, government coverups, and media manipulation. McGahan and Flanagan both set their novels in Australia after 9/11 and focus on the nation's responses to acts of domestic terrorism seemingly perpetrated by Islamist extremists. Both novels depict governments that have become increasingly totalitarian, ruling societies driven by fear and paranoia. In McGahan's and Flanagan's novels, the government's response to 9/11 and domestic terrorism is to attempt to exert total control over society; however, in the process, the government, rather than terrorism, becomes the primary threat to Western civilization. Due Preparations for the Plague, Underground, and The Unknown Terrorist all expose and interrogate the interdependent relationship between governments, the media, and terrorism, while critiquing the use of terrorism by governments and the media to exert, maintain, and increase power. (Author's abstract)
'A World of ...Risk, Passion, Intensity, and Tragedy : The Post 9/11 Australian Novel Richard Scott Carr , 2009 single work criticism
— Appears in: Antipodes , June vol. 23 no. 1 2009; (p. 63-66)

'The terrorist has become a familiar figure and terrorism a common referent in recent Australian writing. I intend to explore a handful of Australian novels published, like [Janet Turner] Hospital's work , since 2001 : A.L. McCann's Subtopia (2005), Linda Jaivin's The Infernal Optimist (2006), Richard Flanagan's The Unknown Terrorist (2006), and Andrew McGahan's Underground (2006). All of these novels entered a world attuned to the destructive potential of the terrorist and wary of the terrorist desire to wreak and skill at wreaking havoc.'
[Review] Underground Tony O'Loughlin , 2006 single work review
— Appears in: Bookseller + Publisher Magazine , August vol. 86 no. 2 2006; (p. 34)
— Review of Underground Andrew McGahan , 2006 single work novel
The Terror We Face Tomorrow James Ley , 2006 single work review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 30 September - 1 October 2006; (p. 32-33)
— Review of Underground Andrew McGahan , 2006 single work novel
Straight for the Throat Kerryn Goldsworthy , 2006 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , October no. 285 2006; (p. 8-9)
— Review of Underground Andrew McGahan , 2006 single work novel
Author's Disgust Fuels his Best Yet Nick Bray , 2006 single work review
— Appears in: The Courier-Mail , 7 - 8 October 2006; (p. 23)
— Review of Underground Andrew McGahan , 2006 single work novel
Mix and Match Katharine England , 2006 single work review
— Appears in: The Advertiser , 21 October 2006; (p. 10)
— Review of Underground Andrew McGahan , 2006 single work novel
What Lies Beneath Tony O'Loughlin (interviewer), 2006 single work interview
— Appears in: Bookseller + Publisher Magazine , August vol. 86 no. 2 2006; (p. 44)
Clouds Gather in Terrorism Storm Andree Stephens , 2006 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 30 September 2006; (p. 6-7)
Cowering Inferno Andrew Stafford , 2006 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Bulletin , 31 October vol. 124 no. 6544 2006; (p. 76-77)
Worst-Case Enthusiasts Imre Salusinszky , 2006 single work column
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 25-26 November 2006; (p. 40) Imre Salusinszky reflects on recent films and books that feature 'apocalyptic imaginings'. 'That apocalypse and looming disaster should form an important theme of the arts at a time like this is no surprise. But when we look at the contemporary arts and ask what is identified as the source of the disater, one extremely plausible villain, Islamofascism, is nowhere to be found.' Salusinszky illustrates his thoughts with reference, among other works, to Andrew McGahan's Underground and Richard Flanagan's The Unknown Terrorist.
When Big Brother is Just a State of Mind Carl Ungerer , David Martin Jones , 2007 single work essay
— Appears in: The Australian Literary Review , February vol. 2 no. 1 2007; (p. 6-7)

Ungerer and Martin Jones create a fictitious student roaming the bookstores of Australia's universities. Their student gains impressions of the portrayal of government policy relating to terrorism via readings of fiction and non-fiction works.

The authors decide that the student might conclude 'that either the literary and academic world inhabited a paranoid delusion or that the fascist Australian state was incompetent. For despite the apparently totalitarian controls of the anti-terror laws, government, police, bureaucracy and media all seem to tolerate, and even encourage with generous funding grants, the academic and literary exposure of their authoritarian ambitions.'
VIEW ALL WORKS ABOUT (29)

Awards

VIEW ALL AWARDS (5)
Last amended 12 May 2020 10:37:09
Subjects:
Settings:
  • c
    Australia,
    c
  • Canberra, Australian Capital Territory,
  • 2010-
Newspapers:
    Powered by Trove
    X