The Lieutenant
- 5 Sep 2019
- 9781786896025
- £9.99
- 320 pp
- 131×198mm
- 30 Oct 2008
- 9781847673985
- £7.19
- 320 pp
In a few words
A story of unlikely friendship, a voyage across oceans and a journey towards understanding from the Booker Prize-shortlisted and Women Prize-winning Australian novelist Kate Grenville
In a few words
A story of unlikely friendship, a voyage across oceans and a journey towards understanding from the Booker Prize-shortlisted and Women Prize-winning Australian novelist Kate Grenville
A triumph. Read it at once
In lucid prose and perfectly measured strides, Grenville lays down her riveting tale. A novel aglow with empathy, its author's capacious visions still deliver an elemental thrill
A deft historical tale of discovery . . . [Dawes'] qualities shine lambently through Grenville's elegantly calibrated prose . . . The lasting impression of her novel is not of drama, but of a lovely, watchful stillness: a sort of astronomy of the human heart
Jane Shilling
Sunday TelegraphGrenville inhabits characters with a rare completeness . . . the reader shares the excitement of his widening consciousness . . . Grenville writers with a poet's sense of rhythm and imagery . . . [and] explores the natural rifts that arise between settlers and native people with a deep understanding of the ambiguities inherent in such conflicts. She occupies the mind of Rooke with a kind of vivid insistence, and his isolation - and moral dilemmas - become ours.
Jay Parini
GuardianMore about
the book
*NEW NOVEL RESTLESS DOLLY MAUNDER SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2024*
FROM THE BOOKER PRIZE-SHORTLISTED AND WOMEN’S PRIZE-WINNING AUSTRALIAN NOVELIST
In 1788 Daniel Rooke sets out on a journey that will change the course of his life. As a lieutenant in the First Fleet, he lands on the wild and unknown shores of New South Wales. There he sets up an observatory to chart the stars. But this country will prove far more revelatory than the skies above.
Based on real events, The Lieutenant tells the unforgettable story of Rooke’s connection to an Aboriginal child – a remarkable friendship that resonates across the oceans and the centuries.
More about
the book
*NEW NOVEL RESTLESS DOLLY MAUNDER SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2024*
FROM THE BOOKER PRIZE-SHORTLISTED AND WOMEN’S PRIZE-WINNING AUSTRALIAN NOVELIST
In 1788 Daniel Rooke sets out on a journey that will change the course of his life. As a lieutenant in the First Fleet, he lands on the wild and unknown shores of New South Wales. There he sets up an observatory to chart the stars. But this country will prove far more revelatory than the skies above.
Based on real events, The Lieutenant tells the unforgettable story of Rooke’s connection to an Aboriginal child – a remarkable friendship that resonates across the oceans and the centuries.
A beautifully uplifting piece of fiction
An original, inviting tale
Genuinely affecting
Grenville's prose is clear and clean, employing a gently leading storytelling style that is especially welcome with a foreign land and a foreign time . . . Grenville has brought imagination and compassion to the source of so much of Australia's retroactive hand-wringing. What distinguishes her portrayal of Aboriginal culture is that for once appreciation, sympathy and admiration get the better of impotent guilt
Lionel Shriver
Daily TelegraphGrenville's prose is clear and clean, employing a gently leading storytelling style that is especially welcome with a foreign land and a foreign time . . . Grenville has brought imagination and compassion to the source of so much of Australia's retroactive hand-wringing. What distinguishes her portrayal of Aboriginal culture is that or once appreciation, sympathy and admiration get the better of impotent guilt.
Lionel Shriver
Daily TelegraphGrenville lingers carefully over her exposition of Rooke, setting him up as a singular character. This enhances the drama of the book's later pages, in which his sensibilities are so disastrously different to those of his shipmates. . . . Genuinely affecting, her new novel is another capable tranche of character-based, historical fiction and a worthy foil to its predecessor.
Melissa Mcclements
Financial TimesA compelling narrative . . . an intelligent, spare, always engrossing imagining of first contact, in which the fictionalization of history allows a comment about current postcolonial race relationships which escapes the didacticism of special pleading.
Patrick Denman Flanery
Times Literary SupplementGrenville is one of Australia's most popular writers, and this novel is a triumph. Read it at once.
Kate Grenville
View profileKate Grenville‘s bestselling novel The Secret River received the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Miles Franklin Literary Award. The Idea of Perfection won the Women’s Prize. Grenville’s other novels include Sarah Thornhill, The Lieutenant, Lilian’s Story, Dark Places, Joan Makes History and A Room Made of Leaves. Her 2024 novel Restless Dolly Maunder was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction.
kategrenville.com
Kate Grenville
View profileKate Grenville‘s bestselling novel The Secret River received the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Miles Franklin Literary Award. The Idea of Perfection won the Women’s Prize. Grenville’s other novels include Sarah Thornhill, The Lieutenant, Lilian’s Story, Dark Places, Joan Makes History and A Room Made of Leaves. Her 2024 novel Restless Dolly Maunder was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction.
kategrenville.com
