AustLit

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)