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by Rohan Wilson
A powerful, suspenseful tale about a father and son in search of one another, this prize-winning novel based on real-life events is a classic western story of vengeance and redemption set against the sweeping, merciless grandeur of the Australian frontier.
It is the summer of 1874. Launceston, a colonial outpost on the southern Australian island of Tasmania, hovers on the brink of anarchy, teeming with revolutionaries, convicts, drunks, crooked cops, and poor strugglers looking for a break. Outlaw Thomas Toosey races to this dangerous bedlam to find his motherless twelve-year-old son before the city swallows the child whole, but he is pursued by more than just the law. Hindering his progress at every turn is a man to whom he owes a terrible debt: the vengeful Irishman Fitheal Finn, whose hooded companion hides a grotesque secret.
Brilliantly told in galloping, lyrical prose and infused with gothic tones reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy, Daniel Woodrell, and William Faulkner, To Name Those Lost is a gripping story of fatherly devotion and of one man's search for moral bearings in a lawless society.
Winner, Victorian Premier's Literary Award
Adelaide Festival Award for Best Novel
"This is a satisfying, grimy adventure about a reciprocal violence that pollutes." - Publishers Weekly
"[A] fast-paced, hard-nosed fable about revenge, pursuit, and the search for a moral compass in a place where chaos and rage and injustice set every dial wildly aquiver." - Kirkus
"Riveting ... a tale that readers will not be able to wrench their eyes away from." - The Australian (Australia)
"Wilson's ambition may be no less than to recast the way in which historical fiction is written." - The Sydney Morning Herald (Australia)
"Ferocious and brilliant ... there is no denying the raw power and purity of intent of Wilson's To Name Those Lost." - The Australian Book Review (Australia)
"Wilson's superbly taut novel keeps up its pace with spare punctuation and brutal dialogue in a vigorously drawn landscape feverish with the heat of a bushfire summer." - The Saturday Paper (Australia)
This information about To Name Those Lost was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Rohan Wilson was named as one of the Sydney Morning Herald's Best Young Novelists in 2012. His debut novel, The Roving Party, won the 2011 The Australian/Vogel Literary Award as well as the Margaret Scott Prize, Tasmanian Literary Awards in 2013 and NSW Premier's Literary Awards 2012. To Name Those Lost won the Victorian Premier's Literary Award and the Adelaide Festival Award for Best Novel. He lives in Tasmania.
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