Passenger (Keneally novel)

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Passenger
Author Thomas Keneally
CountryAustralia
Language English
GenreFiction
Publisher Collins, Australia
Publication date
1979
Media typePrint
Pages186 pp
ISBN 0002216299
Preceded by A Victim of the Aurora  
Followed by Confederates  

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

Contents

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

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References

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