Set in the 1820s, this is a gripping, striking and memorable piece of historical fiction. It begins in the Australian outback of New South Wales, where a small band of troopers have the grim task of executing, under the rough justice of the colony, one Daniel Carney, the sole survivor of a gang of rebels, bushrangers as they are called, whom they have managed to track down. Adair, the Irish officer in charge, assumes the role of keeping an eye on Carney during the night, ostensibly to find out more about the gang. Even if you are not immediately hooked by the clear prose which creates a vivid sense of place at the remote Curlow Creek, and of the interactions between the characters, do not be deterred by the moments of violence in the first chapter.

Through a series of lengthy flashbacks, the storyline shifts back to Adair’s very different past. Orphaned as a very young child, he had the mixed blessing of being brought up in a wealthy, if eccentric household, where he formed, in a complex triangle, a close attachment to both Virgilia, an older girl who lives at a nearby country estate and to Fergus, born soon after to the lady of the manor who has taken Adair in. Whereas Adair is cautious and responsible, knowing he has to make his own way in the world, Fergus, the family heir, has a Heathcliff-style charisma and wildness. When this eventually takes him to Australia, where he takes up the cause of the underdogs, Virgilia tasks Adair with following Fergus there to find out what has happened to him. So it is that Adair’s long conversations with Daniel Carney in the last hours of his life are primarily to establish whether “Dolan”, the dead leader of the gang, was actually Fergus, and if so, what were his final motives and actions.

This is the framework of what turns out to be a well-constructed plot with moments of high tension, which is nevertheless secondary to the novel’s underlying purpose. It weaves together insights into the colonial experience from both sides in rural Ireland and Australia – different, yet with certain parallels, and also into human nature in general, and how we are shaped by a complex mixture of fate, chance and inheritance – so that in the course of being bound to suffer or impose “an insufficient law”, a man may come to terms with, or “find” himself.

This novel by Australian author David Malouf has a very poetic quality, which is not surprising since his books of verse began to be published before his fiction. His gift for expressing ideas with great clarity, precision, depth and range is very impressive. He deserves to be more widely known, and this book merits being read more than once.