Sean Turnell is seated with his back to Sydney’s harbour at a small table on the strip of restaurants along the Barangaroo promenade. It’s a hot and humid day and I’m running a couple of minutes late. When I see he’s wearing shorts and a polo shirt, I quietly curse myself for changing into my suit for the meal.
He tells me that he thought about dressing up for our interview, given it was the Financial Times, but his wife Ha Vu told him not to be silly. “The FT dresses up for you!” she said. She was right.
It has been a surreal week for Turnell, the Australian academic and former economic adviser to the Myanmar government who was arrested after the 2021 coup that deposed the country’s former leader Aung San Suu Kyi. He was convicted for violating official secrets laws and spent 650 days in Myanmar jails before being abruptly released a year ago. His book, An Unlikely Prisoner, has just been released in Australia and he has squeezed in our lunch between onstage talks and signings. “If life is bread and circuses, I’m in the circuses part,” he says.