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    English Passengers
    English Passengers
    English Passengers
    Audiobook20 hours

    English Passengers

    Written by Matthew Kneale

    Narrated by Ron Keith, Simon Prebble, Gerard Doyle and

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    English Passengers presents the diverse and often conflicting perspectives of a remarkable cast of characters—including British convicts, government officials, missionaries who impose their European standards and self-serving rules on the native population, aboriginal Tasmanians caught in a desperate struggle for survival, and members of a bizarre expedition searching for the Garden of Eden.

    The narrative begins in 1857, as Captain Illiam Quillian Kewley of the Sincerity, thwarted in his plans to smuggle tobacco and brandy into England, is forced to put his boat up for charter. He soon finds himself bound for the Pacific, carrying not only his well-hidden contraband but also the Reverend Geoffrey Wilson, an eccentric vicar out to prove that the Biblical Garden of Edenlies in the heart of Tasmania; Dr. Thomas Potter, an arrogant scientist developing a revolutionary and sinister theory about the races of mankind; and Timothy Renshaw, a diffident young botanist. Each man offers a highly personalized record of the high seas adventures and internecine feuds that mark the voyage.

    The situation that awaits them in Tasmania is brought to life in narratives exposing the dark history of British and aboriginal relationships since the 1820s.

    Peevay, the son of an Aborigine raped by an escaped convict, describes the subjugation of his people by English invaders who are as lethal in their good intentions as they are in their cruelty. His impressions, ironically confirmed byreports from white officials, schoolteachers, and settlers, chronicle the destruction of a thriving, self-sufficient community in the name of God, science, and "civilization."

    Based on historical facts, English Passengers is an epic tale, packed with swashbuckling adventure, humor, and memorable characters. Matthew Kneale renders the prejudices and follies of the Imperialist Age with dead-on accuracy and captures—through the voice and destiny of Peevay and his tribesmen—the irreversible tragedies it wrought.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateApr 15, 2009
    ISBN9781436134286
    English Passengers
    Author

    Matthew Kneale

    Matthew Kneale was born in London in 1960, the son and grandson of writers. He studied modern history at Magdalen College, Oxford. He has written five novels, including English Passengers, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award, and two nonfiction books. For the last fifteen years he has lived in Rome with his wife and two children. Visit him at MatthewKneale.net. 

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    Reviews for English Passengers

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    • 4/5
      An epic tale, related with some humour, touching on issues of race, culture, class and empire.
    • 5/5
      This is an historical novel with multiple story lines beginning with the story of Captain Illiam Quillian Kewley, the leader of a crew of Manx smugglers. It is here that both the authenticity and complexity of the novel begins to display itself. Kewley is a lively character as are his fellow Manx shipmates. Apparently the Isle Of Man, according to historical sources, was home to Manx smugglers who wandered widely and that some were forcibly transported to the New World, where they endured the hospitality of Port Arthur prison in Tasmania. I enjoyed this part as it was very amusing when Kewley and crew try to offload their ill-gotten gains. But then their ship attracts the attention of Customs, and Kewley is forced to consider the indignity of taking on board paying passengers.This is divine timing for the Reverend Geoffrey Wilson, who needs a ship to go to Tasmania to prove his theory of Divine Refrigeration. His discourse offers the rather surprising argument that the Garden of Eden is to be found within Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania). Wilson has been inspired by the writings of Darwinists, who believe that the Bible is not to be taken literally when it comes to the question of Genesis and the Origins of Species. Unfortunately, Wilson's sponsor is the infantile entrepreneur Jonah Childs whose notion of a good idea would be to use wallabies as pack animals. Childs further demonstrates his poor judgement when he chooses the odious Doctor Potter as botanist for the trip who also volunteers as ship's surgeon. It doesn't take long for Wilson and Potter to realise that they are natural enemies, and it seems that we could be in for a battle of the survival of the fittest, as each take turns to try to convert Kewley's crew. No matter how he tries, Kewley is unable to dump his passengers, so off into the New World they sail.Another storyline retreats in time to the 1820s to detail the narration of Peevay, a Tasmanian Aborigine, who relates how the 'ghosts' take over the land of his people, and drive them to extinction. He is the product of a rape: his mother was snatched by a white sealer and imprisoned on his island. She escaped, but is forever haunted by the seething hatred she feels for the man who did that to her. When his mother rejects him due to his mixed blood, Peevay yearns for his father. One might think that a novel full of individual narrators would be difficult to navigate, but Kneale handles this well with vivid and vital characters who are engaging for the reader, even when they are as unlikeable as Potter is. I found Kneale's narrative always quite stimulating as did the rest of our Thursday evening book group. He artfully brings all of these narratives to life in a masterful display of black comedy.
    • 5/5
      What a hoot this one is. A rollicking story of a hapless band of smugglers who get to Tasmania. Very funny and entertaining but also touches on the dark history of Tasmania and the treatment of the aborigines. Part historical, part fiction, a bit of both and a lot of both. Unlike other books that end up neither one thing nor the other, this one gets both right at the same time. Interesting window on history where the surgeon character is based on Robert Knox who wrote The Races of Men, a profoundly influential bestseller of its age which helped form the racial views of Adolf Hitler amongst others.
    • 4/5
      Highly entertaining read! A cast of bumbling Manx rum-runners is forced to charter their boat in order to pay fines. They agree to take three Englishmen from England to Tasmania. This unlikely trio is led by a reverend who believes the Garden of Eden is located there. At the same time, we have the story of the terrible effects of colonization on Australian aborigines, centered on Peevay, who has vowed to learn the white man's ways in order to better fight him. As the pirates and the garden seekers approach, it easy to see there will be a clash.The story is told from multiple perspectives, which gives is a richness of depth. Multiple perspectives has become a common style, but in this book, it works especially well. Great story, wonderful characters...I really enjoyed it.
    • 5/5
      Holy rollicking sea adventure! Matthew Kneale managed to tell a tale of high adventure while at the same time relating the story of the horrors the English visited on the aborigines in Tasmania and the horrific penal colonies established by the British state. Historical fiction at its best. I could not put this book down.Set between 1828 and 1858 and told in alternating chapters by the individuals on board the ship, or residing on the island we hear from the ship’s owner, the three individuals who hired the boat to explore what their leader thought was the garden of Eden in Tasmania, and one very savvy aborigine boy who was the real star of the narrative. An irresistible mix of adventure, horror, violence, humor and the indefatigable human spirit make this book a sure winner. For me anyway. Very highly recommended.
    • 5/5
      This is definitely a unique novel of historical fiction bringing together a cast of blundering individuals thrown together on a foolish mission. Captain Kewley is a Manxman (man from the Isle of Man); he has his first ship, the Serenity, staffed with fellow Manxmen. He has no love for the English and their tariffs and gets himself involved in a smuggling operation. The Reverend Wilson is a sanctimonious Englishman who believes he has figured out that Eden was in Tasmania. Finding no one else to search for Eden, he decides to go on the voyage himself. Dr. Potter, an anthropologist joins the voyage as does Tim Renshaw, an unmotivated young biologist whose family thinks this voyage would help him settle down. Put these together and the events are something like the three Stooges on a seafaring voyage across the globe. If one thing goes right, two things go wrong. All the while Rev. Wilson is proudly praying and directing.In Tasmania, we meet Peevay as a child. His mother apparently hates him and wants nothing to do with him. His background becomes clear that he is a child of rape of a Tasmanian aborigine by a cruel white man named Jack Harp.Each chapter is told by different narrators so the reader gets accounts from different angles. We meet prison guards, Governors, and governor's do-gooder wives, more natives, and a host of minor characters. Each providing a small part of a complicated, dark, violent, and sad picture of Tasmania.Unusual book, but loved it.
    • 5/5
      The funniest book about genocide I have ever read. Hilarious and heartbreaking in equal measure. I learned things from this book that they didn't teach me in school.
    • 5/5
      This book is fantastic on audio cd. One of the best audio cds ever.
    • 4/5
      I was recently looking at a list of books that I read before I had a computer at home and this book was on the list for the year 2000. And yet I have no recollection of reading it. That's one of the reasons why I now do reviews of all the books I read. Something about putting down my thoughts helps to cement the fact that I read the book in my mind. I may not recall much about the plot or the characters but I will remember the title and possibly even the author and whether I liked it or not. So, for the second time I read this book and I enjoyed it (just as I probably did the first time). The English Passengers of the title are a vicar (The Reverend Geoffrey Wilson), a doctor (Dr. Thomas Potter) and a young biologist (Timothy Renshaw). The vicar has had a vision that the Garden of Eden was located on the island of Tasmania. A wealthy man has agreed to send Wilson, Potter and Renshaw to Tasmania to check this out. The ship they hire to carry them belongs to a captain from the Isle of Man. Captain Illiam Quillian Kewley (such a great name to roll off the tongue) and his crew thought they would make a quick trip to France, pick up some tobacco and brandy and other highly taxed goods and then offload them at a remote spot on the English coast where a cousin would pick them up and sell them. His ship, the Sincerity, was fitted with a double hull with access to the space between the two hulls being used to hide the goods. It was a terrific design. Despite being searched by English customs agents for days the illicit cargo was never found. However one piece of French cheese brought on board by a crewman was enough for a stiff fine. In order to get the Sincerity out of London harbour Kewley agreed to take these passengers on board. He didn't plan to go any further than his cousin's abode but, with one thing and another, the Sincerity headed off to the antipodes. The long voyage caused divisions between the passengers and showed that the doctor and the biologist were not supportive of the search for Eden but had taken the trip for their own reasons. The Reverend became more convinced of his cause and a little less attached to reality as the time elapsed. There are many moments when the reader smiles or even laughs on the outward voyage. However, interspersed with these accounts are historical passages about the fate of the aborigines in Tasmania. From the time the English landed on the island aborigines were killed, imprisoned and infected with disease. Within a generation their numbers had dwindled. Most of what we learn about the aboriginal fate is told by a half-caste named Peevay. Once the English passengers land on Tasmania they come into contact with Peevay and the narratives join up. The reader can't help but cheer on Peevay in his final encounter with white men.
    • 4/5
      A fantastic story and a great portrait of the unfortunate colonization of Tasmania.
    • 4/5
       This is such fun! Narrated by the various characters that appear, there are a number of strands of story - a smuggling expedition gone wrong, a mad voyage to discover the Garden of Eden, an anthropological travesty of research, the convict system in Tasmania and the fate of the Tasmania aborigines. These various strands all come to a knot in Tasmania in the 1850, when the expedition lands. Some of the characters are lovely, some plain potty and some really very unpleasant - but all are products of their time and place. the views of the doctor are unacceptable to the modern ear, but that doesn't mean they were not expressed and taken to be true at the time.

      Some of those featured come out of this quite well. Renshaw ceases to be dissolute and finds a purpose in life, Captain Quewley doesn't get hanged for smuggling (which is a bit of a result really) and Peevay finds lands and a tribe to call his own. The others get (to differing degrees) their just deserts.

      Listened to on audiobook where there were a number of different actors reading the different parts just made this a more enjoyable listen. It really worked well. Great fun.
    • 5/5
      I read this for a book club, and I didn't want to repeat what everyone else said, in their reviews, so I've just written a few things that occurred to me. Dr Potter and Reverend Wilson were so blinkered by their pet theories, that they couldn't actually see what was in front of their faces. In Dr Potter's case, everything anyone else said and did was filtered through his 'notions', and discarded as a fluke if it didn't fit. This was amusing when writing about the uselessness of the Norman type during his rows with Wilson, and totally unbelievable in his under-estimation of Peevay when they were in the wilderness. How did he think the aborigines had survived there before? I think he had gone completely crazy by then. How I laughed at the thought of him mouldering away in that museum case! He would have been frothing at the mouth at the thought that anyone could think that his skeleton was an aborigine's.On the other hand, Renshaw started out as a 'slacker' with no aim in life, and found himself during the expedition. Because he didn't have a fixation about what they were going to find, he was more open to the experience. I was joyous when he came upon num sheep animals and knew he was back in the world (oops - it's catching!).I already knew that the Tasmanian aborigines had been wiped out before Istarted reading the book, and I disagree with the people who found Peevay'scontributions hard-going. In fact, I thought that it was a pity that the only Aboriginal voice that we heard was Peevay's. It would have been interesting to hear from Walyeric and Tayaleah/George as well.Reverend Wilson thinks that Tasmania is the site of the garden of Eden, and maybe it was originally. But then the Europeans arrived and turned it into purgatory for the convicts and hell for the aborigines.
    • 5/5
      I listened to this as an audiobook and loved it. I had read "When we were Romans" and not been that impressed. But this novel is funny and sad and thought provoking. The audio I listened to had various people performing the voices and they were very very good. I learnt about a shameful part of history yet it also made me laugh out loud. The farcical bad luck of Captain Kewley is so amusing and yet just as I thought the novel was going in one direction it changes and goes in a completely different direction. And I felt so sorry for Peevay and his people. Definately recommended.
    • 5/5
      A rollicking tale of geology, Genesis and genocide, featuring a mad vicar, a body-snatching doctor, the unluckiest gang of smugglers in the history of the world, and an ever-diminishing group of native Tasmanians who find themselves being wiped out less by intentional malice than by simple, sheer carelessness. Beautifully written in a number of different but fully convincing voices, the horror of the Aborigines' fate almost slips in as subtext but will stick with you, I guarantee, for a very long time.
    • 5/5
      A tour de force. A multi-layered story set in the 1800's that moves around the globe and then focuses on Tasmania in the early days of British settlement. The arrival of settlers and British government had a disastrous impact on the Indigenous people. Other themes include the clash between science and religion, the management of penal colonies, theories about racial characteristics and superiority, and the exploration and development of new territories by the British. The story is told in the first person by more than twenty characters, each with their own distinctive voice. A great achievement. Most of these characters are misguided fools who plow on, oblivious to reality, and ultimately pay the price for their folly. The only one with a resonable grasp of what's happening is Peevay, the young Aboriginal boy.It was such a surprise to find a Manx writer had come across this small but shameful part of Australian history and decided to bring it out into the light. The other surprise is that Kneale has managed to tackle a very serious issue with a great deal of humour. The first half of the novel has a rollicking quality, with many laugh out loud scenes, but as the story progresses there's no escaping the message that the early settlers basically eradicated the Aboriginal population of Tasmania.
    • 5/5
      Brilliant!
    • 4/5
      What is it anyway? I've never read a bad book set in Tasmania. There's the wondrous Gould's Book of Fish. There's another novel that I read a few years ago that I can't for the life of me remember the name of. That one and Kneale's English Passengers both cover some of the same ground - the destruction of the aboriginal people of the island. The history itself is compelling.Kneale's historical novel (a Booker short lister in 2000, the Atwood Blind Assassin year) has a quirky cast of characters that cross all ethnicities - and form a major part of this tale. There're the Manxmen, from the small island subsumed by the British Empire. There are the convicts, trappers, and settlers of Tasmania (the white scut). There are the dwindling aboriginal tribes of Tasmania. And finally, there are the English passengers themselves, who form a broad range of types and personalities just amongst themselves. One of this group is Dr. Potter, a London surgeon who is collecting specimens of ethnic types and writing his own precursor to Mein Kampf. Another of the English passengers is a small time vicar who has visions of finding the Garden of Eden, that he decides must be located in Tasmania. Hence he, the vicar, and a wastrel geologist become the passengers of the title, who hire out the vessel of a group of Isle of Manx smugglers for the trek to discover paradise on earth. This voyage, along with the story of the extermination of the aboriginal peoples of Tasmania (Van Diemen's land) form the narrative as told through short chapters in first person of the various players in a sort of diary like format. The myriad and diverse perspectives are one of the delights of the book.There's the chronicle of Peavey, told in a pidgin English that swells with rage and deflates with despair as his people are killed off by policy, by disease, and by "progress". There are the various government officials and even the 'liberal' bleeding heart do gooder (who, at the end of the day, is as destructive as the murderous settlers) who profess that they have nothing but the best interest of the poor "savages" in mind. One can't help but note the racist seeds of 19th Century imperialism have taken root and mutated into other, more subtle forms of social hegemony that are still with us today.
    • 5/5
      A fantastic history lesson and novel rolled into one, told in a remarkable twenty distinct voices. If you liked Kingsolver's Poisonwood Bible you will enjoy this.
    • 5/5
      A rollicking account of a chaotic expedition to Tasmania, to find the original garden of Eden. A heartbreaking account of the more or less deliberate extermination of a race, but more or less well-meaning people. A fabulous babel of different voices telling of many obsessions and one story. Just fab.
    • 5/5
      The author manages to write a humorous novel about horrible genocide. The depictions of the enslavement and demise of the Tasmanian natives is brutal and tragic. The author saves his humor for the descriptions of the English passengers who come to the island to set up their own Garden of Eden.
    • 1/5
      Waiting till I finish it...if ever - so far slipshod research into ships (why go aloft to let go the sheets? Sheets are lines attached to the corners of the sail and are led down to the deck, landlubbers often confuse sheets and sails, I've sailed in square rig and I know) ; since when does a sea breeze blow away from the land, I'm not trying to be petty, these little errors compound the unconvincingness...how could a wombat climb a companionway ladder on its stumpy legs...Well I finally finished it. Funny? not to me. Clever? no - full of silly little errors of fact that undermine it. Every English voice is full of self righteouss pompousness and it becomes very annoying- I realise this is a technique of characterisation (having each character speak in their own voice) but the cliches and platitudes are exceptionally tedious! (Hence the need for a third person narrator).... and what was it about - it seemed to be at war with itself, am I a comic romp about an inept Manx smuggler and a dotty Englich cleric or a dark tale about the evils of racial psuedo science and the fate of the Tasmanian aboriginals. I don't have a full O.E.D. either but I suspect as well as sailing errors we have a great deal of anachronistic speech...I think the book fell into it's own trap - every English character thinks they know best about the "poor blacks" and the author thinks he knows best about the attitudes he satirises. For all these reasons for me it failed utterly. How could it win a Whitbread? Fashion for noble savages and idiot Europeans?
    • 5/5
      Missing Links or Chains?We are in Tasmania, once Van Deiman's Land, in search of Paradise; amongst the prisoners in the British run proto-concentration camps; with the aborigines facing extinction at the hands of `the British'; and on a boat of `unfortunate' Manx smugglers constantly running from customs officers. The scope is both very tight on two `small' islands off the coast of major parts of the Great British Empire, and world spanning in the vast expanses of the British Ruled Waves between.I wouldn't know the factual accuracy of everything in the novel, but it is certainly one of those fictions that contain a truth about both the good and the bad in human nature.It is a book of contrasts, where you cannot remove one `side' without making the other invisible. The Reverend Wilson, in a reaction to the new study of Geology's findings about the age of the earth is in search of a physical, only 5,000 year old Paradise; on the same trip is Dr Potter, secretive scientific in the new sense, and looking for evidence of the inheritable superiority of the Anglo-Saxon. Both wish to become famous as a result of the publications they will base on their journey across the world.Put against this high energy double-extreme is the third member of the expedition, Timothy Renshaw; a disappointment to his family and on the boat officially as botanist, but really in search for a meaning to his life - or so his family hope: A more laid-back, late adolescent you could not wish for.I can't help being reminded of the voyage of the Beagle, of Darwin and Fitzroy. But it is only a reminder - Matthew Kneale has resisted the temptation to base his characterisation on them but seems to have taken the issues which arise from that real, paradigm-shattering voyage and personified them.That this works so well is mainly due to the stunning `voice' he gives to each of his characters.The Manx captain and crew don't only have a superficial sprinkling of Manx words, they seem to think Manx - and a whole culture linked and contrasting with the dominant English emerges in those parts told by Captain Illiam Quillian Kewley (and Kneale should have won the Booker Prize on the strength of that name alone!).The tour-de-force though is Peevay.With a Tasmanian mother abducted to be a sex-slave by an escaped convict father, Peevay journeys through the book searching for love and identity. The only certainty he has is his ability to endure. He tells his story in a language which stretches English to its limits. It isn't the usual `poetic' limit, or `stream-of-consciousness' limit; it is a twisted grammar and not-quite-right-vocabulary of a none-native speaker struggling to express complex thoughts and emotions limit; it is a way of thinking about the world in another culture limit; it's a limit which pulls you screaming and kicking into a strange world and consciousness of `other' experience.It is a language that makes you regret that part of your ancestry which was responsible for the Genocide on Van Deiman's Land.I don't think I give too much away if I say Peevay does achieve a sort of resolution, nor if I say there is an ending which leaves one hopeful. This is a book which you won't forget in a long time, and which treats the 19th century as what it was - the foundation of much of what we think and do at the start of the 21st Century.Well worth reading!
    • 5/5
      A comic and touching story of racial extinction, religious fervour, and honest-to-goodness smuggling. I raced through this one and loved every page.
    • 4/5
      The vicar is looking for the Garden of Eden in Tasmania. The aborigines are being killed off by the white settlers. Surprisingly, for the content this is a comic novel. I finished it because it was on the Radio 4 Reading Club but it wasn’t really my cup of tea although it was quite a good book.
    • 4/5
      A Whitbread Book of the year (20000 - always a good sign.Beautifully written. A sharp, humorous, compassionate fictional portrayal of the destruction of the aboriginal peoples of Tasmania at the hands of British settlers (and their diseases) in the 19th Century.
    • 5/5
      Kneale wrote this book in about 20 different voices. All unique and fascinating to read. The book succeeds on several levels. It's great historical adventure fiction, it's a study of prejudice disguised as academia, and it's literary enough that the English teacher in our book club is adding it to her high school reading lists. I recommend this one.