Roman Polanski's Chinatown was about the politics of water in pre-war Los Angeles, then a small city in a large desert.
I was reminded of this when reading (Wildlife, 512 pp, £20) by Chris Hammer, whose scary outback thriller was televised last year. In the 1920s, a consortium of Australian families, calling themselves the Seven, create Yuwonderie, an oasis in the parched outback that relies on a system of irrigation canals. Treating the town like a demesne, the Seven and their descendants prosper.
