Passenger
AuthorThomas Keneally
CountryAustralia
LanguageEnglish
GenreFiction
PublisherCollins, Australia
Publication date
1979
Media typePrint
Pages186 pp
ISBN0002216299
Preceded byA Victim of the Aurora 
Followed byConfederates 

Passenger (1979) is a novel by Australian writer Thomas Keneally.[1]

Abstract

The narrator of this novel is a foetus in utero, who watches the outside world through his mother's eyes. He observes the break-up of his parents' marriage, his mother's incarceration in a mental hospital, and her eventual escape and travel to Australia, where he is born.

Dedication

"To Trish Sheppard and Iain Findlay."

Critical reception

In the Canberra Times Hope Hewitt was a little annoyed with the main character: "In practice it provides a novel excuse for the oldest of narrative conventions: the omniscient narrator. It also provides for a variation on the Romantic notion of the wise child; and I confess that there were moments when the little man became so polysyllabically philosophical or his creator so cutely whimsical that I found myself wishing the brat would remain unborn...But apart from a few irritations with the conventions of the fantasy, Passenger is an entertaining book, with its constant changes of scene and its unexpected uses of language."[2]

Publication history

After its original publication in 1979 by Collins,[3] the novel was published as follows:

See also

References

  1. 1 2 "Austlit - Passenger by Thomas Keneally". Austlit. Retrieved 8 July 2023.
  2. โ†‘ ""Vision from the womb"". The Canberra Times, 2 June 1979, p16. Retrieved 8 July 2023.
  3. โ†‘ "Passenger (Collins 1979)". National Library of Australia. Retrieved 8 July 2023.
  4. โ†‘ "Passenger (Fontana)". National Library of Australia. Retrieved 6 July 2023.
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