Review: Brown Skin, White Lies by Bobby Mohan

I received an advanced review copy of this book for free via Reedsy Discovery. This did not affect my opinion of the book in any way.

Published: June 2025
Pages: 430

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Synopsis

A $90 pickle fine at Melbourne Airport was meant to be a rounding error. Instead, it started a three-year descent into debt, disappearance—and murder.

Arjun Ajith Nair came to Australia with a student visa and a duffel full of borrowed dreams. By the time he reaches Broome, he’s got $14,000 in cash, a forged Timorese passport, and the ghosts of two bodies buried deep in red orchard dirt.

What begins as a story of migration quickly mutates into a fugitive’s orchard exploitation, blackmail, betrayal, and a final reckoning in the mangroves beyond justice. Tracked across Rote, Jakarta, Bali, and Beirut, Arjun learns that paperwork can kill, silence can cost lives, and the lies we tell to belong may be the ones that erase us.

Told in staccato bursts, field notes, and encrypted memory, Brown Skin, White Lies is a literary survival file for the debt-ridden, the disappeared, and those who’ve ever had to choose between paperwork and personhood.

My Thoughts…

This review was originally published on Reedsy Discovery.

Arjun has a dream: leave his hometown in India to pursue an MBA in Australia. Arjun has a problem: restrictive immigration systems and prohibitive enrolment fees make his dream nearly impossible to achieve. Soon, he is thrown into a spiral of debt, desperation, and lies that may very well cause him to lose everything – even himself.

Brown Skin, White Lies starts strong, sharing the often-forgotten story of a person stuck in an unfair immigration system, where paperwork and bureaucracy erase any trace of humanity, equity or understanding. Arjun – like so many other people across the world – is only seeking a better life, but the hurdles he faces in doing so have significant repercussions on his family as well as on himself.

Unfortunately, this does not translate into a compelling narrative, largely due to the stylistic choices made in this book. The idea to use an unconventional narration is admirable, but ultimately ineffective: while the idea was probably to rely on logs and serrated sentences in an attempt to convey the sense of gradual dehumanisation generated by the immigration system, the result is often confusing and hard to read, negating the possibility for the reader to develop any sort of emotional connection with Arjun. By the end, there is no empathy to be felt nor any righteous anger towards the system, as both have been annulled by ledgers and account balances throughout.

The narrative often feels fragmented and sterile, certainly unaided by the frequent repetitions and occasional inconsistencies which suggest that the book might have benefited from another round of editing rather than appearing to be intentional stylistic choices. There is simultaneously too much and not enough going on, with loan sharks, crime gangs and even a human trafficking/labour exploitation ring making an appearance but failing to generate any sense of urgency or a strong emotional response, again mostly due to the almost clinical narration. The final act, by contrast, feels almost rushed and underdeveloped, with very few feelings left once the final page is turned.

The intention to share the story of someone made to be invisible by an unjust system is praise-worthy, however in its current form Brown Skin, White Lies fails to hit the mark, though it has the potential to tell a deeply compelling story.