One of the narrators of Matthew Kneale's ambitious historical novel English Passengers has more modest aspirations: Captain Illiam Quillian Kewley wants only to smuggle a little tobacco, brandy, and French pornography from the Isle of Mann to a secluded beach in England.

'synopsis' may belong to another edition of this title.Ĭhristopher Columbus was looking for a passage to India when he ran full-tilt boogie into the Americas. Narrated by over twenty different characters, each one so distinct that the reader has the sense of a story not so much told as dazzlingly peopled, Matthew Kneale has created a buoyant tale, beautifully presented in a storm of voices that brings a past age to vivid and memorable life. As the English passengers haplessly approach Peevay's land, their bizarre notions ever more painfully at odds with reality, we know a mighty collision is looming.įull of dangerous humor, English Passengers combines wit, adventure, and harrowing historical detail in a mesmerizing display of storytelling. This is no Eden but a world of hunting parties and colonial ethnic cleansing. Meanwhile, an aboriginal in Tasmania named Peevay recounts his people's struggles against the invading British, who prove as lethal in their good intentions as in their cruelty. Yet they set sail, pointed southward and bound for a thrilling, epic romp across the high seas and cultures of the nineteenth century. And these passengers are perhaps only slightly more odd than the crew itself, a diverse and lively bunch better equipped to entertain one another than to steer Sincerity around Cape Horn and across the Indian Ocean. Thomas Potter, unbeknownst to Wilson, is developing a revolutionary, and sinister, thesis of his own, about the races of men. The Reverend Geoffrey Wilson believes the Garden of Eden was on the island of Tasmania.

The only takers are two eccentric Englishmen who want to embark for the other side of the globe. When Captain Illiam Quillian Kewley and his band of rum smugglers from the Isle of Man have most of their contraband-but not all-confiscated by British Customs, they are forced to put their ship Sincerity up for charter. So get comfortable, and be prepared to enter a fascinating world.'

'Robust and 's tough to pull off a memorable epic, but Kneale has done it. ' English Passengers is an old-fashioned book in the best sense: epic in scale, crammed with outsize characters, set in a long-ago time and a faraway place.

The english passengers