An English lieutenant is ordered to stage a play starring prisoners of the Australian penal colony he supervises in this phantasmagoric historical fiction masterwork from the author of Schindler's List In the penal colony of Sydney Cove, Australia, at the farthest reaches of the late-nineteenth-century British Empire, Lieutenant Ralph Clark has received a bizarre commission. In honor of the king's birthday, Clark is charged with staging a production of the George Farquhar comedy The Recruiting Officer using as cast and production crew the highwaymen, whores, cutpurses, killers, and other assorted disreputables exiled there from the British Isles. Pining over the family he left behind, Clark must work miracles with only two printed scripts, a company of unstable and largely illiterate "actors," and the dubious assistance of his colleagues. But the success-or failure-of the mammoth enterprise rests largely on the shoulders of lead actress Mary Brenham, the mesmerizing and enigmatic female convict to whom Clark finds himself strangely and dangerously attracted. Based on the lieutenant's real diaries, The Playmaker is a truly remarkable achievement. Atmospheric, dreamlike, and richly evoking time and place, featuring a monumental cast of magnificently drawn, unforgettable characters, it is a work of insight, imagination, and true genius by one of the most notable names in historical fiction.
"The best performance of a novelist's magic that I have seen since William Kennedy's Ironweed . . . A style of rich chance-taking fiction that we don't encounter often enough on our shores."
The Washington Post
"Keneally's style is earthy yet dignified, pungent and powerful and yet able to record the most subtle and delicate shadings."
Chicago Tribune
"Intricately plotted, peopled with several dozen incisively observed, individually fascinating characters this seems to be the book Keneally's career has been reaching toward. He has created a world so rich and strange that we experience it as if in a dream, while never for a moment doubting either its authenticity or its ultimate truth."
