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Chris Johnson, June 6, 2008

When I travel abroad I usually try to read books, especially novels, by local authors. Occasionally there is a book so good that I just can't believe it is not available in the US. I have been spending a lot of time in Australia recently, where the per-capita production of quality fiction has to be the highest in the world. On a recent trip to Tasmania, I picked up two books by Christopher Koch.

Koch, if he is known at all here in the States, is known as the author of The Year of Living Dangerously, a novel set in Indonesia and made into an excellent movie. As good as that book (and movie) is, Highways to a War and its companion volume Out of Ireland are even better.

At Port Arthur in Tasmania, you can visit the ruins of one of Australia's most feared penal colonies. One of the more intriguing sites at Port Arthur is a small, pretty cottage on the hill, where William Smith O'Brien was imprisoned. O'Brien was from an Irish aristrocratic family and participated in the Young Ireland movement, for which he was "transported" to Tasmania. Because of his aristocratic status, O'Brien did not serve with the common prisoners at Port Arthur.

Out of Ireland explores the convict history of Tasmania through the eyes and fictional pen of Robert Devereux, an aristocratic Protestant Irishman transported for his role in the Young Ireland movement. The novel is everything you might hope for in such a story. It includes horrifying depictions of life on the transport ships; the hopelessness of the convicts separated from their families, almost certainly for the rest of their lives; beautiful images of the wild Tasmanian landscape; and thoughtful depiction of the ethical quandary these aristocratic "prisoners" faced. In accepting a degree of freedom unavailable to the common convicts, are they implicitly cooperating with English tyranny, or simply making the best of a bad situation? This is the quandary that winds its way throughout this fantastic novel.

Read this book and share it with a friend. And keep your eyes open for other books by this great Australian writer.

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