Amnesia review – Peter Carey turns to hacktivism in his diffuse 13th novel

The two-time Booker winner is less concerned with cyber attacks than with the overlooked history of ill will between Australia and America

• Anthony Cummins - The Observer, Sunday 16 November 2014

WikiLeaks? It all started in 1975… Peter Carey, photographed in London, 2014. Photograph: Sarah Lee

Peter Carey’s new novel tells the story of Felix Moore, a leftwing Australian journalist at work on a biography of a wanted hacker whose virus has infected a corporation responsible for securing prisons in the United States. Felix’s commission comes with exclusive access to his subject, Gaby Baillieux, but working conditions are less than ideal; at one point he’s beaten up and taken to a secret location in the boot of a car. Bankrolled by a shady tycoon who knows that Felix once hung out in the same radical circles as Gaby’s actress mother, the job represents a lifeline for a man who has just lost a defamation suit – and whose specialist subject is the history of ill will between Australia and America.
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