Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Winner: Victorian Premier's Literary Award and the Adelaide Festival Award for Best Novel
A powerful page-turner about a father and son in search of each other in a lawless age and a violent land, To Name Those Lost is a tale of guilt, vengeance, fatherhood, and redemption that recalls the novels of Cormac McCarthy and those of Booker-Prize winning author Richard Flanagan.
In the summer of 1874, Launceston, on the Australian island of Tasmania, teeters on the brink of anarchy. A colonial outpost at the end of the world, it teems with hard men, drunks, agitators, crooked lawmen, and poor strugglers looking for a break. To this dangerous bedlam, the wanted man Thomas Toosey must return to save his twelve-year-old son. His progress is hindered at every turn by the Irishman, Fitheal Flynn, to whom Toosey owes a terrible debt. Flynn is accompanied by a mysterious hooded figure whose story, when it emerges, will make it evident that Toosey's debt can only be repaid in blood.
Told in a galloping literary style, To Name Those Lost, winner of both the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Best Novel and the Adelaide Festival Award for Best Novel, is an unforgettable and moving book by one of Australia's fastest rising literary talents.
Synopsis
A powerful, suspenseful tale about a father and son in search of one another, this prize-winning novel based on real-life events is a classic western story of vengeance and redemption set against the sweeping, merciless grandeur of the Australian frontier.
It is the summer of 1874. Launceston, a colonial outpost on the southern Australian island of Tasmania, hovers on the brink of anarchy, teeming with revolutionaries, convicts, drunks, crooked cops, and poor strugglers looking for a break. Outlaw Thomas Toosey races to this dangerous bedlam to find his motherless twelve-year-old son before the city swallows the child whole, but he is pursued by more than just the law. Hindering his progress at every turn is a man to whom he owes a terrible debt: the vengeful Irishman Fitheal Finn, whose hooded companion hides a grotesque secret.
Brilliantly told in galloping, lyrical prose and infused with gothic tones reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy, Daniel Woodrell, and William Faulkner, To Name Those Lost is a gripping story of fatherly devotion and of one man s search for moral bearings in a lawless society.
Winner
Victorian Premier's Literary Award
Adelaide Festival Award for Best Novel"