The Settlement (Paperback)

Paperback. On the windswept point of an island at the edge of Van Diemens Land, the Commandant huddles with a small force of white men and women. He has gathered together, under varying degrees of coercion and duress, the last of the Tasmanians, or so he believes. His purpose is to save themfrom a number of things, but most pressingly from the murderous intent of the pastoral settlers on their country. The orphans Whelk and Pipi, fighting for their survival against the malevolent old man they know as the Catechist, watch as almost everything proves resistant to the Commandants will. The wind, the spread of disease, the strange black dog that floats in on the prow of a wrecked shipBut above all the chief, the leader of the exiles, before whom the Commandant performs a sordid dance of intimacy and betrayal.In The Settlement, Jock Serong reimagines in urgent, compelling prose the ill-fated exploits of George Augustus Robinson at the settlement of Wybalennaa venture whose blinkered, self-interested cruelty might stand for the colonial enterprise itself. A career-defining masterpiece by internationally award-winning Australian storyteller Jock Serong Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.