Brown Skin, White Lies is a propulsive migrant noir that rips the glossy veneer off the "Australian dream." Arjun Nair-Kerala-born, scholarship poor, and one failed lecture away from deportation-scrapes through Melbourne on illegal shifts, couch-surf leases, and promises that bill by the hour. When a predatory lender threatens his father's pharmacy back home, Arjun's last safety net snaps.

Enter Rekha Gurung, a Nepali nursing dropout with her own paperwork problems and a bakery job that barely pays daylight. Together they bolt north, hitching planes, buses, and half-lit hopes toward orchard work in Kununurra, where passports turn to bargaining chips and the sun brands its own barcode on skin.

Along the way, pawn slips, burner phones, and bruised alliances pile up. Police inquiries close in; a drug-runner named Trang won't stay ghosted; and every border checkpoint tightens the screws on class, caste, and the quiet brutality of survival. Yet amid the grit beats a fierce tenderness-friendships forged over instant noodles, a love that outruns police radios, and a stubborn belief in a "soft place to land."

Told in punch-cut vignettes laced with black humour and lyrical bite, Brown Skin, White Lies will resonate with readers of The White Tiger, Behold the Dreamers, and On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous. It is a story about leaving home, losing the map, and rewriting destiny in a country that prices every breath.