Overview

When Dimp Bettany, a Sydney film producer, comes into possession of her ancestor John Bettany's journals, she believes she has finally found the subject of her next masterpiece. Even her more detached sister Prim, an aid worker in the Sudan, becomes intrigued as the story unfolds of how John Bettany carved out a living in the wilds of New South Wales in the 1840s, and of the internment in the notorious Female Factory of Sarah Bernard, the convict woman he was destined to meet. As John's and Sarah's paths converge, each sister finds her life cast in a new and galvanising light.

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Acclaim for Thomas Keneally: 'A great storyteller' -- The Times 'The best Australian writer alive' -- Auberon Waugh 'A novelist of high quality and great daring...a marvellous storyteller' -- Scotsman

The framework of Keneally's latest novel involves two sisters, Dimp attempting to make a film in her native Australia, and Prim, an aid-worker in Sudan, seeking distraction from a disastrous relationship. Dimp discovers memoirs written by John Bettany, one of their ancestors, describing how he set up a sheep farm in virgin territory, and the two sisters become increasingly preoccupied with his tale. What links these apparently disparate strands are notions of society and civilization: a community of convicts establishes prosperous homesteads, displacing other communities as they go, but a century later Australia is cynical and corrupt, while across the world Prim does battle with a country at war with its own self. The tales echo across the 19th and 20th centuries, each fragment finding a mirror vision to produce a kaleidoscopic and absorbing read on several levels. (Kirkus UK)

Acclaim for Thomas Keneally: 'A great storyteller' -- The Times 'The best Australian writer alive' -- Auberon Waugh 'A novelist of high quality and great daring...a marvellous storyteller' -- Scotsman

Author Information

Thomas Keneally began his writing career in 1964 and has published more than thirty novels since. They include Schindler's Ark, which won the Booker Prize in 1982 and was subsequently made into the film Schindler's List, and The Chant Of Jimmie Blacksmith, Confederates and Gossip From The Forest, each of which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. He has also written several works of non-fiction, including his memoir Homebush Boy, Searching for Schindler and Australians. He is married with two daughters and lives in Sydney.

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