FROM THE WINNER OF THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2014. Mathinna, an Aboriginal girl from Van Diemen`s L&, is adopted by nineteenth-century explorer, Sir John Franklin, & his wife, Lady Jane. Franklin is confident that shining the light of reason on Mathinna will lift her out of savagery & desire. But when Franklin dies on an Arctic expedition, Lady Jane writes to Charles Dickens, asking him to defend Franklin`s reputation amid rumours of his crew lapsing into cannibalism. Dickens responds by staging a play in which he takes the leading role as Franklin, his symbol of reason`s triumph, only to fall in love with an eighteen-year-old actress. As reason gives way to wanting, the frontier between civilisation & barbarity dissolves, & Mathinna, now a teenage prostitute, goes drinking on a fatal night.