A Commonwealth of Thieves: The Improbable Birth of Australia Book

With the authority of a renowned historian and the narrative grace of a brilliant novelist, Thomas Keneally offers an insider's perspective into the dramatic saga of the birth of a vibrant society in an unfamiliar land. A Commonwealth of Thieves immerses us in the fledgling penal colony and conjures up colorful scenes of the joy and heartbreak, the thrills and hardships that characterized those first four improbable years. The result is a lively and engrossing work of history, as well as a tale of redemption for the thousands of convicts who started new lives thousands of miles from their homes..

The New York Times - Alison McCulloch

In his more than 40 years as an author, the Australian-born Keneally has made a specialty of writing about history, both in fiction (The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith and Schindler s List, for example) and in popular nonfiction (notably American Scoundrel, his biography of the Civil War general Dan Sickles, and The Great Shame, about the Irish diaspora). Here, he turns his novelist s eye to the first four years of white Australia, folding the dreary facts and figures into the more engaging elements of character and narrative.