English Passengers

First US edition. 8vo. 446pp. Cream cloth-backed boards, lettered in blue foil to spine; dark blue endpapers. Deckled fore-edges. Jacket design by Jean Traina, with cover art by Tim O'Brien. Note on language, Anglo-Manx glossary.

Winner of the 2000 Whitbread Novel of the Year and the overall Whitbread Book of the Year. In French translation, it won the 2002 Prix Relay du roman d'évasion for its style and imagination. Short-listed for the 2000 Booker Prize and the 2001 Miles Franklin Award, the first time a non-Australian was so honoured.

Author's fourth novel, recounted in a multi-voice narrative. The story of an 1857 sea-voyage by three eccentric Englishmen aboard a Tasmania bound Manx contrabandist ship, in search of the Garden of Eden. "'Deeply impressive... Every page fizzes with linguistic invention." –Steven Poole, The Guardian