- English Passengers
"English Passengers" (ISBN 0-385-49744-X) is a
2000 historical novel written byMatthew Kneale , which won that year'sWhitbread Book Award and was shortlisted for theBooker Prize and the Miles Franklin Award. It is narrated by 20 different characters and tells the story of avoyage to look for theGarden of Eden and the rapid decline of an island’s indigenous population.Plot summary
In
1857 , after their attempts to smuggle contraband goods land them with a heavy fine from the BritishCustoms , Captain Illiam Quillian Kewley and his crew of Manx sailors are forced to offer their ship for charter. The vessel is quickly hired by a party ofEnglishmen headed by an eccentricVicar , the Reverend Geoffrey Wilson, who believes that the Garden of Eden is located inTasmania and wants to mount an expedition there to find it. However, unbeknownst to theclergyman , one of his fellow travellers has an entirely different reason for journeying to the island.Dr Thomas Potter is a renownedsurgeon who is developing athesis on the races of man and hopes to find some interestingspecimens there.Running parallel with this story, but starting some 30 or so years earlier, are the recollections of Peevay, one of Tasmania's
natives , who describes the devastating impact the whitesettlers had on his people, and the aborigines' struggle to adapt to the cultural changes which were forced on them.Many of the chapters alternate between the two different time periods, but when the Manx ship eventually docks in Tasmania, both strands of the story are brought together for the book's conclusion.
References
*English Passengers by Matthew Kneale ISBN 0-385-49744-X
*A brief summary of the book together with points for discussion at http://www.readinggroupguides.com/guides/english_passengers.asp
*Matthew Kneale at http://www.contemporarywriters.com
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.
