num_pages: 352
description: The Transit of Venus is considered Shirley Hazzard's most brilliant novel. It tells the story of two orphan sisters, Caroline and Grace Bell, as they leave Australia to start a new life in post-war England. What happens to these young women -- seduction and abandonment, marriage and widowhood, love and betrayal -- becomes as moving and wonderful and yet as predestined as the transits of the planets themselves.Gorgeously written and intricately constructed, Hazzard's novel is a story of place: Sydney, London, New York, Stockholm; of time: from the fifties to the eighties; and above all, of women and men in their passage through the displacements and absurdities of modern life.
language: English
title: The Transit of Venus
titlecomplete: The Transit of Venus
characters: Angus Dance, Paul Ivory, Armand Elphinstone, Caroline Bell, Sefton Thrale, Tertia Drage, Charmian Thrale, Ernesto Prata, Glad Pomfret, Ted Tice, Cordelia Ware, Clive Leadbetter, Josie Vail, Dora Bell, Nicholas Cartledge, Adam Vail, Grace Bell, Major Bruce Ingot, Christian Thrale, Margaret Tice, Gwen Morphew, Victor Locker
genres: Fiction, British Literature, Australia, Womens, Literature, Classics, Novels, Historical Fiction, 20th Century, Literary Fiction
ratings_count: 4046
places: England, New York City, New York, Sydney, New South Wales, London, England
awards: awardedAt: 347184000000
name: PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, awardedAt: 315561600000
name: National Book Critics Circle Award
category: Fiction, awardedAt: 378720000000
name: National Book Award Finalist
category: Fiction (Hardcover) (1982) & (Paperback)
publisher: Penguin Books Ltd