Gould's Book of Fish

Winner of the Commonwealth Prize New York Times Book ReviewNotable Fiction 2002 Entertainment WeeklyBest Fiction of 2002 Los Angeles Times Book ReviewBest of the Best 2002 Washington Post Book WorldRaves 2002 Chicago TribuneFavorite Books of 2002 Christian Science MonitorBest Books 2002 Publishers WeeklyBest Books of 2002 The Cleveland Plain DealerYears Best Books Minneapolis Star TribuneStandout Books of 2002 Once upon a time, when the earth was still young, before the fish in the sea and all the living things on land began to be destroyed, a man named William Buelow Gould was sentenced to life imprisonment at the most feared penal colony in the British Empire, and there ordered to paint a book of fish. He fell in love with the black mistress of the warder and discovered too late that to love is not safe; he attempted to keep a record of the strange reality he saw in prison, only to realize that history is not written by those who are ruled. Acclaimed as a masterpiece around the world, Goulds Book of Fish is at once a marvelously imagined epic of nineteenth-century Australia and a contemporary fable, a tale of horror, and a celebration of love, all transformed by a convict painter into pictures of fish.