When Gaby Baillieux releases the Angel Worm into Australia's prison computer system, hundreds of asylum-seekers walk free. And because the Americans run the prisons, the doors of some five thousand jails in the United States also open. Is this a mistake, or a declaration of cyber war? And does it have anything to do with the largely forgotten Battle of Brisbane between American and Australian forces in 1942? Or with the CIA-influenced coup in Australia in 1975? Felix Moore, known to himself as "our sole remaining left-wing journalist," is determined to write Gaby's biography in order to find the answers--to save her, his own career, and, perhaps, his country. But how to get Gaby--on the run, scared, confused, and angry--to cooperate?
Peter Philip Carey (born 7 May 1943) is an Australian novelist. Carey won his first Booker Prize in 1988, for *Oscar and Lucinda,* and won his second Booker Prize in 2001, for *True History of the Kelly Gang.* He has also won the Miles Franklin Award three times. In addition to writing fiction, he collaborated on the screenplay of the film Until the End of the World with Wim Wenders and was, for nineteen years, executive director of the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program at Hunter College, part of the City University of New York.