The Fatal Shore - Couverture souple

"A unique phantasmagoria of crime and punishment, which combines the shadowy terrors of Goya with the tumescent life of Dickens" (Peter Ackroyd, The Times)

"A triumph of research, passion and fine writing. I found it an extraordinary and compelling book to read, one of fantastic scope and imagination; truly a tour de force" (William Shawcross)

"Riveting" (The Book Magazine)

"With its mood and stature...The Fatal Shore is well on its way to becoming the standard opus on the convict years" (Sydney Sunday Telegraph)

"An enthralling account of the convict settlement of Australia, thoroughly researched and excellently written, brimming over with rare and pungent characters, and tales of pathos, bravery, and horror" (Peter Matthiessen)

Robert Hughes, art critic of Time magazine and twice winner of the American College Art Association's F. J. Mather Award for distinguished criticism, is author of The Shock of the New, and of Heaven and Hell in Western Art, both written before the present work. He is also author of the acclaimed Nothing if Not Critical, "criticism at its most intelligent and impressive, trenchant, lucid, elegantly written-"in the words of William Boyd; a work on Frank Auerbach; Barcelona, and Culture of Complaint, essays on the fraying of America, described in the Observer as " the most bracing of critical broadsides against new anti-intellectual tyrannies". Robert Hughes died in August 2012.