by David Malouf
First published 1994
Thirteen-year-old British cabin boy Gemmy Fairley washes ashore in northern Australia during the 1840s. Aboriginal people find him and raise him for sixteen years. When Gemmy walks back into the European world, he encounters settlers carving out lives in unfamiliar territory. These colonists react to Gemmy with both curiosity and fear. He represents something they cannot easily categorize. Gemmy brings knowledge of aboriginal ways that disturbs their assumptions about the land and its original inhabitants. His presence forces them to confront what they do not understand about this place they now call home. Gemmy himself struggles with his divided loyalties and fractured sense of belonging. He exists between two worlds without fully inhabiting either one. The settlers must decide how to respond to this man who challenges their boundaries and beliefs about civilization and wilderness.
Genres: fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, adventure, coming-of-age, british-literature, 19th-century, cultural
Vibes: atmospheric, emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: divided-loyalties, fish-out-of-water, fractured-identity
Setting: Australia, Northern Australia
Period: 1840s
207 pages · Paperback · Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group