Wanting

From the winner of the Man Booker Prize. The bestselling, universally lauded novel of desire and its denial from acclaimed writer Richard Flanagan. Van Diemen’s Land, 1841. Mathinna, the adopted Aboriginal daughter of the island’s governor, Sir John Franklin, and his wife, Lady Jane, sits for her portrait. She is the subject of a grand experiment in civilisation – one that will determine whether science and reason can be imposed in place of savagery and desire. Years pass. Sir John Franklin disappears on an Arctic expedition to find the fabled Northwest Passage. England is horrified as reports of cannibalism filter back from search parties, no one more so than the most celebrated novelist of the day, Charles Dickens, for whom Franklin’s story becomes a means to plumb the frozen depths of his own soul. As several lives become entwined, Wanting transforms the classical myth of Leda and the swan into a novel about the ways in which desire – and its denial – shape us all.

Reviews of Wanting

"One of the best novels of this year… Irresistibly good" The Times "Haunting and powerful… Flanagan does a magical job of conjuring his native Tasmania as it must have appeared to English settlers" New York Times "A summary does little justice to the complexities and nuances of this dense and fascinating novel… There are moments of great power and lyricism in Wanting, not only in wild Tasmania but also in noisome London… The novel illustrates once again – with terrific brio and aplomb – how fictionalizing history and real people can pay great dividends" — William Boyd Scotsman "This is the best novel I have read this year or expect to read for several more… Wanting shakes us rudely from our stupors, wakes us up to history. There can be no author more passionate or unfettered than Flanagan" Sydney Morning Herald "A beautifully constructed fugue on desire and its denial" Times Literary Supplement