Playmaker - Softcover

Keneally, Thomas

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0671885111 ISBN 13: 9780671885113

Publisher: Atria Books, 1993

Synopsis

Keneally's magnificent story of a young officer in a penal colony during the founding days of Australia transports readers through layer after layer of life in Sydney Cove, Australia. Advertising in New York Review of Books and Village Voice Literary Supplement.

About this title

About the Author:

Thomas Keneally began his writing career in 1964 and has published thirty-three novels since, most recently Crimes of the Father, Napoleon’s Last Island, Shame and the Captives, and the New York Times bestselling The Daughters of Mars. His novels include Schindler’s List, which won the Booker Prize in 1982, The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, Gossip from the Forest, and Confederates, all of which were shortlisted for the Booker Prize. He has also written several works of nonfiction, including his boyhood memoir Homebush Boy, The Commonwealth of Thieves, and Searching for Schindler. He is married with two daughters and lives in Sydney, Australia.

From Publishers Weekly:

The production in 1789 of a prisoners' performance of The Recruiting Officer provides the framework upon which the Australian author of Schindler's List and A Family Madness hangs this rollicking, thoughtful tale of his country's earliest days as England's furthermost prison. Amongst the tents and ramshackle huts of the first settlement on Sydney Cove, young Lt. Ralph Clark (a real Royal Marine who wrote a real journal) auditions such convicts as Ketch Freeman, highwayman, and Mary Brenham, thief, for the roles in the comic drama. Ralph doesn't dislike New South Wales or his duty there, but he longs for his sweet wife Betsey back in Plymouth and determines not to allow distance to diminish his faithfulness to her. As rehearsals proceed, layered life in the penal colony unfolds: provost marshall Harry Brewer is plagued by the ghost of a young Marine private recently hanged for fighting; Sydney's governor captures, and is captivated by, a handsome young native; prisoners and privates steal and deal; odd alliances are formed and sundered; and Ralph is increasingly drawn to the quietly self-possessed Mary Brenham. Ralph's resolution of his dilemma coincides with the play's staging in honor of the king's birthday; both are successful ventures. So is this lusty and affectionate tribute to Australia's raw beginnings at the time of its bicentennial.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Atria Books
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0671885111
• ISBN 13: 9780671885113
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352