Wanting by Richard Flanagan, Paperback, 9781784702922 | Buy online at The Nile
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Wanting

Author: Richard Flanagan  

Paperback

'Reason is only reason and satisfies only man's reasoning capacity, while wanting is a manifestation of the whole of life' Fyodor Dostoevsky

FROM THE WINNER OF THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2014Mathinna, an Aboriginal girl from Van Diemen’s Land, is adopted by nineteenth-century explorer, Sir John Franklin, and his wife, Lady Jane.

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Summary

'Reason is only reason and satisfies only man's reasoning capacity, while wanting is a manifestation of the whole of life' Fyodor Dostoevsky

FROM THE WINNER OF THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2014Mathinna, an Aboriginal girl from Van Diemen’s Land, is adopted by nineteenth-century explorer, Sir John Franklin, and his wife, Lady Jane.

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Description

FROM THE WINNER OF THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2014

Mathinna, an Aboriginal girl from Van Diemen’s Land, is adopted by nineteenth-century explorer, Sir John Franklin, and his wife, Lady Jane. Franklin is confident that shining the light of reason on Mathinna will lift her out of savagery and desire. But when Franklin dies on an Arctic expedition, Lady Jane writes to Charles Dickens, asking him to defend Franklin’s reputation amid rumours of his crew lapsing into cannibalism.

Dickens responds by staging a play in which he takes the leading role as Franklin, his symbol of reason’s triumph, only to fall in love with an eighteen-year-old actress. As reason gives way to wanting, the frontier between civilisation and barbarity dissolves, and Mathinna, now a teenage prostitute, goes drinking on a fatal night.

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Critic Reviews

Exquisite New Yorker
Fascinating New York Times
Irresistibly good The Times
Dazzling... A captivating tale of cruelty and disappointment Washington Post
Richard Flanagan is a master Guardian
A beautifully constructed fugue on desire and its denial Times Literary Supplement
This is the best novel I have read this year or expect to read for several more... Wanting shakes us rudely from our stupors, wakes us up to history. There can be no author more passionate or unfettered than Flanagan Sydney Morning Herald

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About the Author

Richard Flanagan was born in Tasmania in 1961. His novels Death of a River Guide, The Sound of One Hand Clapping, Gould’s Book of Fish, The Unknown Terrorist, Wanting and The Narrow Road to the Deep North have received numerous honours and are published in 42 countries. He won the Man Booker Prize for The Narrow Road to the Deep North in 2014.

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Product Details

Publisher
Vintage Publishing | Vintage
Published
26th May 2016
Pages
272
ISBN
9781784702922

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