Shakespeare has written a wonderfully Chatwinesque book about a place in which individual historical narratives are woven in with the writer's own research and encounters. This is the sort of book I like best; a collection of extraordinary incidents and fantastic claims, of phantom visions and unbelievable facts; animals which can eat 40 per cent of their own body weight in one sitting, and a possum-catcher's niece who became the Queen of Denmark ...There are many gems in this irresistibly rum book.

---Philip Hensher, Spectator

In this fascinating history of two turbulent centuries in an apparently idyllic place, Shakespeare effortlessly weaves the history of this unique island with a kaleidoscope of stories featuring a cast of unlikely characters from Errol Flynn to the King of Iceland, a village full of Chatwins and, inevitably, a family of Shakespeares. But what makes this more than a personal quest is Shakespeare's discovery that, despite the nineteenth-century purges, the Tasmanian Aborigines were not, as previously believed, entirely wiped out.

Part I: Father of Tasmania

Part Ⅱ: Black Lines

Part Ⅲ: Elysium

Part IV: Oyster Bay

  Chapter I: Daughter of Tasmania

  Chapter Ⅱ: Tigers and Devils

  Chapter Ⅲ: Oyster Bay

  Chapter Ⅳ: Doubles

Acknowledgements

Sources

IUustrations

Index