Bettany's Book

Description

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.

Thomas Keneally began his writing career in 1964 and has published 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. His most recent novels are The Daughters Of Mars, which was shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize in 2013, and Shame and the Captives. 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.

Like its subject, the novel is huge, magnificent * Mail on Sunday * A marvellously readable and powerfully moving skein of stories * TLS * A work of towering authority: large in scope; rich in detail; overflowing with ripe humanity . . . more than an engrossing novel: it is a stirring one. * Sunday Telegraph * Thomas Keneally confronts the vast economic, cultural and historical distances between Australia and Africa, with a story that bridges them together convincingly . . . His complex new novel about what it means to be Australian should be read for decades to come. * The Times * A riveting and compendious account of the settlement of Australia by white convicts. It is a tremendous work, full of scholarship, adventure, drama and compassion * Daily Telegraph * A thumping big book teeming with energy . . . In a cast of vibrant protagonists, Prim is an exceptional heroine by any literary standards - the beating, human heart of a novel enriched by Keneally's charactistic, fiercely intelligent engagement with serious issues. * Literary Review * Magnificent . . . a literary tour de force * Independent on Sunday *