The novel leads Dominique Wilson through familiar territory, revisiting both the country of her birth – Algeria – and those themes of migration and identity explored in her début novel, The Yellow Papers (2014). Again, her evocation of setting proves a tour de force, immersing the reader in the sensual textures of a foreign land. Intertwined plot lines reveal the forces 'playing a dangerous tug-of-war for the very soul of Algeria', yet characterisation proves more problematic. Skipping between protagonists, countries, and time periods at almost dizzying speed, the sprawl of this novel, its cinematic scene changes, somehow keep even Nicolette and Louis at arm's length.

Emigrating to Australia, Louis urged his granddaughter to forget Algeria and its strife. Only when she returns many years later – a photojournalist documenting a knife-edge moment in her homeland – do Nicolette's 'pleasant snippets of memory' give way to a sense of unease. The political naïf mixing with jaded war correspondents, she serves largely as a conduit for Wilson's potted history of Algeria and its troubles. Struggling to reconcile all these contradictory versions of reality, Nicolette's inner musings simplify the situation while at the same time, revealing its complexity.

That Devil's Madness asks uncomfortable yet timely questions about freedom, war, migration, and collective memory. Like that iconic image of the drowned Syrian toddler washed ashore, it insists that we acknowledge the human face of these concepts.