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The Lieutenant

The Lieutenant

Author(s): Kate Grenville

Location(s): Sydney

Genre(s): Fiction, Historical

Era(s): Late 18th Century

Location

Content

The Lieutenant is the second book in a trilogy of novels by Kate Grenville about early Australia – the others are The Secret River (1) and Sarah Thornhill (3)
Lieutenant Daniel Rooke sails into Sydney Cove with the First Fleet, hoping to advance his career. Instead his life is unimaginably changed.

A young Aboriginal girl visits and begins to teach him her language. As they learn to speak together, they build a rapport that bridges the gap between their dangerously different worlds. Then Rooke is given a command that forces him to choose between his duty as a soldier and the friendship that’s become so precious to him.

Inspired by the First Fleet notebooks of William Dawes, The Lieutenant is about a unique moment when one world engaged with another, and the two remarkable individuals who found ways to share understanding. (Kate Grenville)

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Book Reviews

Lead Review

‘Grenville’s prose is clear and clean, employing a gently leading storytelling style that is especially welcome with a foreign land and a foreign time … Grenville has brought imagination and compassion to the source...

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