PROHIBITED ZONE

In the dark days that followed September 11, the hardest thing was sorting the good guys from the bad. In Australia they got it wrong.

Saira Abdiani and her friend, Amir Ali Khan are Afghan refugees with a violent past. When Saira and Amir both disappear from the Woomera Refugee Detention Centre, the cops, the secret service and a ragtag gang of vigilantes are all on their trail.

Steve West is a former football hero turned mining engineer who just wants a dirty weekend in town. He ends up seeing the dirty side of the War on Terror.

PROHIBITED ZONE is a political thriller with just enough literary allusion to make you think. Set in the Australian desert, suburban Adelaide and the bucolic Fleurieu Peninsula, not long after 9/11 and the Bali bombing, it explores the abuses that can happen when there is insufficient oversight of authority.

PROHIBITED ZONE was shortlisted in the 2010 Adelaide Festival Award for Best Unpublished Manuscript. "Alastair Sarre's ear for dialogue, eye for place and character, and deft skill in pitting historical and political viewpoints
against each other, make Prohibited Zone an excellent, provocative read." - Judges' comments

Alastair Sarre was born in Leigh Creek, a coal-mining town in the outback of Australia. He has worked for a mining company, for an intergovernmental organisation in Japan and as a freelance writer and editor specialising in forestry.