[1] Brother Fish is a story spanning four continents and eighty years, though the bulk of the narrative takes place in Australia and Korea.

The book deals with the friendship of Jacko McKenzie, a native of the (fictional) Queen's Island in the Bass Strait, and James ‘Jimmy’ Pentecost Oldcorn, an orphaned American ex-soldier.

The two have been meeting at the Gallipoli Bar of the ANZAC Hotel, Launceston, Tasmania, for 33 years, ever since their release from a prisoner of war camp in Korea.

In a similar vein, references appear throughout the book to Australia's racist history and its treatment of the aboriginal population as second-class citizens.

A first-person narrator can express all sorts of views that are ironically undercut by the author's implied values.