Wanting
By: Richard Flanagan
Publisher: Random House Australia
Published: 2012
Place of publication: North Sydney, N.S.W
Language: eng
ISBN-13: 9781742755120
Subjects: Fiction; Aboriginal Tasmanians; Indigenous women
Description: "1841. In the remote penal colony of Van Diemen's Land, a barefoot Aboriginal girl sits for her portrait in a red silk dress. She is Mathinna, the adopted daughter of the island's governor, Sir John Franklin, and his wife, Lady Jane, and 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 has disappeared, along with his crew and two ships, on an 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 ..."--Back cover.
Notes: Originally published: North Sydney, N.S.W. : Knopf, 2008.