Former Australian leader Kevin Rudd may have thought his shock toppling from power stranger than fiction, but his novelist daughter foresaw it in prescient detail, a report said Saturday.
Jessica Rudd’s debut novel Campaign Ruby reads like a script for the startling events which saw her father deposed in a backroom party coup, detailing an incumbent leader’s ousting by his female deputy.
The novel describes an “emotional” man, supported by his wife, telling journalists “I am proud,” as his lip quivered, according to Caroline Overington, a journalist with the Australian newspaper who has read an advance copy of the novel.
“The PM’s been toppled,” one protagonist, a political journalist, says in the book.
“This was a seamless move ... Very few people expected this day would come quite so quickly, if at all. Everybody is stunned,” the novel continues.
“This is an historic day. She will be Australia’s first female prime minister.”
A former lawyer who lives with her husband in Beijing, Rudd even hit home with the theme of her successor’s first speech, having the newly-sworn in fictional female PM declare: “The Australian people have been telling us for some time now that change is needed.
“Not a change of government, but a change of leadership,” she says, words remarkably similar to new leader Julia Gillard’s maiden speech.
Gillard said she asked her Labor colleagues to “make a leadership change because I believe that a good government was losing its way ... and at risk at the next election,” adding that she was “not going to sit idly by.”
Campaign Ruby, Rudd’s first novel, is due for publication in August, and Overington was tight-lipped about the plot’s climax.
“An election is called. It pits the new female PM against a male leader of the opposition,” Overington wrote.
“Who wins? As in life, you’ll have to wait and see.”
(AFP)
周六有報導指出，澳洲前總理陸克文被逼宮下台的情節或許比小說故事更離奇，但他身為小說家的女兒早預見這一切。
陸克文愛女潔西卡的第一部小說《選戰紅寶石》，內容描述一名總理在政黨秘密運作下，被女副手推翻下台的過程，情節與她父親的遭遇不謀而合。
讀過該小說新書樣本的《澳洲人報》記者卡洛琳•奧弗林頓表示，書中描寫一名「情緒化」的男子，在妻子的支持下，雙唇顫抖地告訴媒體記者：「我感到很驕傲」。
書中另一要角──一名政治記者則說：「總理被推翻了。」
小說繼續寫道：「這是場天衣無縫的行動……幾乎沒人料到這天會來得這麼快。大家都很震驚。」
「這是歷史性的一天。她將成為澳洲首位女總理。」
過去擔任律師、目前和丈夫旅居北京的潔西卡，甚至切合主題地安排小說中這位女總理在宣誓就職演說時表示：「澳洲人民一直告訴我們，現在是需要變革的時候了。」
書中的女總理還說：「政府並沒有變，只是換了領袖」，這與新任總理茱莉亞•吉拉德首次演說的內容如出一轍。
吉拉德表示，她之所以要求工黨同僚「換領袖，是有感於一個好的政府正慢慢迷失方向……且對下屆選情造成威脅」。她還說，她「不會坐視不管」。
潔西卡的小說處女作《選戰紅寶石》預定八月出版，奧弗林頓對高潮情節則是三緘其口。
奧弗林頓寫道：「大選將至，這位新任女總理將與反對黨男性黨魁角逐大位。」
「誰能榮登大位呢？就像真實人生一樣，等著瞧囉。」
（法新社╱翻譯：林倩如）
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