“Richard Flanagan has now written five great novels including the stunning, highly praised Gould's Book of Fish. His latest is a simple tale based in history, in which Flanagan takes three sensational events, well-known to Victorian England, and imagines how they were played out by the iconic characters involved: Sir John Franklin, governor of the penal colony of Van Diemen's Land and later a doomed Arctic explorer; Charles Dickens; and Mathinna, a beautiful, charismatic aboriginal child adopted by the Franklins in an infamous experiment. Wanting is about desire, and about lack, and the very real tragedy of colonization. How Flanagan brings these events and themes to life is genius.”
— Lisa Howorth, Square Books, Oxford, MS
