This might (probably is) be a bit unfair, but it did colour my final impressions of the book so it's worth discussing what exactly this book is. No because of anything this book is, but because of what I thought it was going to be. I found this book to be something of a disappointment. Impeccably researched and told in the inimitable Keneally style, The Commonwealth of Thieves is the compelling tale of a nation's beginning, its unforgettable people and their quest for identity. Britain's penal experiment succeeded against all odds. From this improbable beginning, through famine, drought, escapes and floggings, the glory of modern Sydney was born. On the swampy shores of Botany Bay, and by the sandstone coves of Sydney Harbour, the clash of civilisations was ineviteable, intense and often tragic. To the indigenous inhabitants, the white men came as ghosts through cracks in the cosmos, rudely seizing the bounty of land and sea. It was an audacious social experiment, unparalleled before or since. Yet the rejects of Britain, accompanied only by a flimsy complement of soldiers, marines and officers, were expected to start a settlement and flourish. So remote was Botany Bay - the destination to which the overcrowded, disease-ridden convict ships were bound - that only one European expedition had ever before anchored there. In 1787, Britain banished its unwanted citizens - uneducated petty thieves, streetwalkers, orphan chimneysweeps and dashing highwaymen - to the fringes of the known world. A brilliant recreation of the first four years of white settlement in Australia by Booker Prize-winning author Tom Keneally.
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