English Passengers

Captain Illiam Quillian Kewley wants only to smuggle a little tobacco, brandy and French pornography from the Isle of Mann to a secluded beach in England. Yet somehow in the process he and his crew end up weighing anchor for Australia. Worse, they are forced to carry three temperamental Englishmen bound for Tasmania on a mission to discover the exact location of the Garden of Eden. The year is 1857 and the study of geology is beginning to make serious inroads into areas of religious doctrine. When the Reverend Geoffrey Wilson runs across a scientific treatise that puts the age of Silurian Limestone somewhere in the neighbourhood of 100,000 years, he is scandalised: "This was despite the fact that the Bible tells, and with great clarity, that the earth was created a mere six thousand years ago". His many attempts to prove the Bible's accuracy lead, eventually, to a scientific expedition comprised of himself, Timothy Renshaw, a dilettante botanist and Dr Thomas Potter.

Now jump back 30 years, to 1828, when a revolution of sorts is stirring on the island of Tasmania. Over the years white settlers have been encroaching on aboriginal land and relations have deteriorated into violence. At the heart of the action is Peevay, a young 'half-breed' abandoned by his aborigine mother, who had been kidnapped and raped by a white escaped convict. Now his vengeful mother is leading a war against the whites, and Peevay, desperate to win her love, has joined her. Chapters from the past narrated by Peevay and augmented by letters and dispatches from white settlers alternate with the sections told by Kewley, Wilson, Renshaw and Potter. Eventually, of course, the two timelines intersect with momentous results.

War, mutiny, shipwreck and not a little farce make English Passengers a gripping read, but it is Matthew Kneale's literary ventriloquism that renders it remarkable. In a novel with so many different points of view, the individuality of each voice stands out. There is, for instance, the mutinous Dr Potter, whose descent into paranoia and egomania results in diary entries reminiscent of a 19th-century psychotic Bridget Jones.

By the close of this epic tale, the world Peevay knew has gone forever, and the lives of the Manx sailors and English passengers have been irrevocably changed. Based on real events in Tasmanian history, Matthew Kneale's novel delivers a home truth about Australia's brutal colonial past, even as it conveys the wonder and allure of the age of exploration.