Wanting

From the author of the bestselling Gould’s Book of Fish , The Sound of One Hand Clapping and The Unknown Terrorist comes a haunting meditation on love, loss and the way life is finally determined never by reason, but only ever by wanting. In 19th-century Van Diemen’s Land, a young Aboriginal girl, Mathinna, is adopted by the celebrated explorer Sir John Franklin and his wife, Lady Jane, to show that the savage can be civilized. Lady Jane believes the distance between savagery and civilization is the learned capacity to control wanting. The experiment fails, and Sir John disappears into the blue ice of the Arctic, seeking the Northwest Passage. A decade later, Lady Jane enlists Charles Dickens’ aid to put an end to the scandalous suggestions that Sir John’s expedition ended in cannibalism. Wanting confirms Richard Flanagan’s growing reputation as one of our most original and powerful novelists.