A South Pacific penal colony in the late eighteenth century. An honest man named Phelim Halloran and Ann Rush, his secret bride. Poet, soldier, lover and grand innocent, Halloran must confront his destiny in a place of tyranny and searing horror.

This edition includes an introduction by Geordie Williamson.

Thomas Keneally was born in 1935 in country New South Wales to Irish Catholic parents. He won the Miles Franklin Award in consecutive years for his novels Bring Larks and Heroes (1967) and Three Cheers for the Paraclete (1968). He was the first Australian ever to win the Booker Prize, in 1982, for Schindler's Ark. In 1983, Keneally became a member of The Order of Australia and in 1997 was named as an Australian Living Treasure.

Geordie Williamson is chief literary critic of the Australian, a position he has held since 2008. His essays and reviews have been appearing in newspapers and magazines here and in the UK for over a decade. In 2011, he won the Pascall Prize for criticism.

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'The long-sought Great Australian novel.' Australian

'Keneally is one of our greatest...He is Australia's Balzac; author of its Human Comedy.' Peter Pierce