In this widely acclaimed volume, bestselling author Thomas Keneally brings to life the vast range of characters who have formed our national story.
Convicts and Aborigines, settlers and soldiers, patriots and reformers, bushrangers and gold seekers, it is from their lives and their stories that he has woven a vibrant history to do full justice to the rich and colourful nature of our unique national character.
The story begins by looking at European occupation through Aboriginal eyes as we move between the city slums and rural hovels of eighteenth century Britain and the shores of Port Jackson. We spend time on the low-roofed convict decks of transports, and we see the bewilderment of the Eora people as they see the first ships of turaga, or 'ghost people'. We follow the daily round of Bennelong and his wife Barangaroo, and the tribulations of warrior Windradyne. Convicts like Solomon Wiseman and John Wilson find their feet and even fortune, while Henry Parkes' arrival as a penniless immigrant gives few clues to the national statesman he was to become. We follow the treks of the Chinese diggers - the Celestials - to the goldfields, and revolutionaries like Italian Raffaello Carboni and black American John Joseph bring us the drama of the Eureka uprising.
Were the first European mothers whores or matriarchs? How did this often cruel and brutal penal experiment lead to a coherent civil society? Tom Keneally brings to life the high and the low, the convict and the free of early Australian society.
This is truly a new history of Australia, by an author of outstanding literary skill and experience, and whose own humanity permeates every page.
About the Author
Thomas Michael Keneally, AO (born 7 October 1935) is an Australian novelist, playwright and author of non-fiction. He is best known for writing Schindler's Ark, the Booker Prize winning novel of 1982 which was inspired by the efforts of Poldek Pfefferberg, a Holocaust survivor. The book would later be adapted to Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture.
Industry Reviews
""In the style of the best historians [Keneally] allows the intrinsic power of the tales he tells and the people who populate his pages to draw the reader into a fully elaborated universe." "New York Times" on" A Commonwealth of Thieves: The Improbable Birth of Australia "
" Keneally has all the gifts of a great storyteller: a curious eye, a clear voice, worldly knowledge and an innocent, inexhaustible heart. "San Francisco Chronicle "on A" Commonwealth of Thieves: The Improbable Birth of Australia"
""Keneally evokes these distant lives with concrete detail and vivid sympathy . . . his people inhabit the same world we dowe meet them without the hesitation of reaching across voids of time and space." "Sydney Morning Herald"
""Tom has this extraordinary eye for the little details that turn a biographical note into a living, breathing life-size character." The Hon. Kevin Rudd MP, Prime Minister of Australia""
""Keneally has all the gifts of a great storyteller: a curious eye, a clear voice, worldly knowledge and an innocent, inexhaustible heart." --"San Francisco Chronicle "on A" Commonwealth of Thieves: The Improbable Birth of Australia
