The Burning Island

'Wow. Put me in this time machine for a few hours... This is a dashing learned book... I could not stop reading this book. If this is historical fiction, give me more.' * Australian * 'Another absolute ripper from Jock Serong. A swashbuckling historical thriller with a steely female protagonist, a cross-dressing sea captain, loads of convincing detail and even more derring-do. Read it in one sitting.' * Alex McClintock * 'A captivating, beautiful seafaring novel.' * Mirandi Riwoe * 'A rollicking good yarn... brilliantly written and immensely entertaining.' * Noosa Today * 'The book is a bloody ripper. It's a propulsive page turner with characters so real and complex that you can see them and is beautifully written at the sentence level. It's about Australia. It's about the deep violence of colonisation to the human world and the natural world. It's about family, outward and inward exploration, the deep sea around us and within us.' * Sarah Krasnostein * 'Serong has written a fine historical novel in The Burning Island. Its vivid depiction of Tasmania's frontier wars during the 19th century, and those who survived them, allow us to reconsider the colonial infancy of the burning island we inhabit today.' * Sydney Morning Herald * 'Serong tells a gripping tale, a literary historical thriller with twists and turns aplenty, and the same menacing undercurrent perfected in Preservation. He is a master of character drama, and his rich storytelling is populated with many vivid personalities: some are resisting and surviving the brutality of Australia's invasion; others are exploiting and revelling in it; others still are set adrift in its turbulence.' * Readings * 'Gripping, gothic and unexpected: Jock Serong achieves the impossible, a man creating a completely brilliant central female character.' * Michael Veitch * 'Serong is among many writers, including Tony Birch, Bruce Pascoe and Kate Grenville, looking closer at the history of colonisation and the narratives that have been handed down as authorised versions, but that need much closer scrutiny.' * Herald Sun * 'I was hooked from the beginning... An incredible historical novel, an incredible adventure.' * Final Draft podcast * 'Elegant... An immersive maritime book... It will not disappoint.' * RN Bookshelf * 'The moving story of a daughter's devotion to her father, with a cracking denouement reminiscent of an Hercule Poirot mystery...The Burning Island starts out as a crime thriller involving a search for a missing ship and a quest for revenge [and]...turns into something much more.' * Australian Book Review * 'Draws you along until an astounding climax.' * Don't Shoot the Messenger podcast * 'There is some kind of magic in the way Jock Serong conjures places and times and people. The Burning Island is a ripping yarn of a book; sometimes while reading I'd be sunk so deep in its adventures, and in the precision of captured moments, that if interrupted I'd rise to the surface blinking, reluctant and surprised.' * Lucy Treloar *