Robbed of Every Blessing

Ireland, early 1800s. The Napoleonic Wars have ended, leaving an already disjointed country in peril. Maurice O'Dwyer, a young Irishman, considers the lifeless body of an English tithe-collector slain under a rain-filled sky. From that moment it seems his fate is sealed: he and his young simpleton brother, Padraig, are exiled to Australia, <i>An Astráil</i>, to the convict-filled island of Van Diemen's Land – leaving behind his love, his land, and his liberty. However, in the bush Maurice discovers that there are allies in the most unlikely of places.<br /> <br /><b>What the critics said</b><br />&quot;With the passion of an activist and the ear of a poet, John Tully constructs his novel out of the differing perspectives of the colonial project, weaving Irish lives and English lives, black experiences and white experiences into a dense tapestry of oppression and the many little resistances it fostered. This is an account of settlement in all its complexity, a multilayered book written with a deep sympathy for ordinary people coping with the collision of very different worlds. It's a text built from parallels, echoes and resonances, a much-needed excavation of a past that still haunts us.&quot; – Jeff Sparrow, co-author of <i>Radical Melbourne: A Secret History</i>