An epic description of the brutal transportation of men, women and children out of Georgian Britain into a horrific penal system which was to be the precursor to the Gulag and was the origin of Australia.

A landmark history that confronts Britain’s colonisation of Australia.

In The Fatal Shore, historian and critic Robert Hughes offers a vivid, unflinching account of Britain’s colonisation of Australia; a history built on the forced transportation of convicts and the dispossession of Indigenous peoples. Drawing on meticulous research, Hughes recreates the harsh realities of the penal system, the endurance of those sent to the colonies, and the profound human cost of empire.

‘An enthralling account… brimming over with rare and pungent characters, and tales of pathos, bravery, and horror’ Peter Matthiessen

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