''Bring Larks and Heroes'' is a 1967 novel by

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. With an area of , Australia is the largest country by ...

n author

Thomas Keneally Thomas Michael Keneally, AO (born 7 October 1935) is an Australian novelist, playwright, essayist, and actor. He is best known for his non-fiction novel '' Schindler's Ark'', the story of Oskar Schindler's rescue of Jews during the Holocaust, ...

which won the

Miles Franklin Award The Miles Franklin Literary Award is an annual literary prize awarded to "a novel which is of the highest literary merit and presents Australian life in any of its phases". The award was set up according to the will of Miles Franklin (1879–1 ...

in 1967.

Plot summary

The novel is set in an unidentified Penal colony in the

South Pacific The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...

, which bears a superficial resemblance to

Sydney Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about towards the Blue Mounta ...

. The novel is concerned with the exploits of the colony's "felons" (a term which was not in general use at the time the novel is set, which Keneally explains his use of in a brief preface as being more appropriate than "convicts"), in particular an Irish

Marine Marine is an adjective meaning of or pertaining to the sea or ocean. Marine or marines may refer to: Ocean * Maritime (disambiguation) * Marine art * Marine biology * Marine debris * Marine habitats * Marine life * Marine pollution Military ...

named Phelim Halloran. Halloran joins the marines after leaving prison and finds he identifies more with the Irish prisoners than his mainly Protestant English superiors.

Critical reception

London-based Australian critic Robert Hughes stated in ''The Times'': "Here is a rarity — an Australian novelist who does not use his Strine literary context as a prop or an excuse, and thus remains sensitive to his actual and physical environment... He is the first novelist to use Australia's colonial past intelligently, neither sentimentalising it as woozy bush-balladry nor turning it into an ersatz myth". Leonard Ward in ''The Canberra Times'': "Thomas Keneally's writing style is smooth and economical of words with sometimes a curious lilt to them, even when he is dealing in brutality and tragedy. He is certainly one of the best Australian novelists today."

Dedication

"To Judith who nursed this poor herd of chapters to pasture."

Publishing history

Following its original publication by Cassell in 1967 (reprinted in 1967 and 1968), the novel went through the following editions: * Belmont Books, New York, 1967 * Sun Books, Melbourne, 1968 (reprinted 1972, 1974, 1976, 1978, 1984) * Viking, New York, 1968 * Quartet, London, 1973 * Penguin, Victoria, 1988 * Text Publishing, Text Classics, Victoria, 2012Text Publishing - ''Bring Larks and Heroes'' by Thomas Keneally
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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bring Larks And Heroes 1967 Australian novels Miles Franklin Award-winning works Novels by Thomas Keneally Cassell (publisher) books