Gould's Book of Fish A Novel in Twelve Fish

<b>Winner of the Commonwealth Prize<br> <br> <i>New York Times Book Review</i>--Notable Fiction 2002<br> <br> <i>Entertainment Weekly</i>--Best Fiction of 2002<br> <br> <i>Los Angeles Times Book Review</i>--Best of the Best 2002<br> <br> <i>Washington Post Book World</i>--Raves 2002<br> <br> <i>Chicago Tribune</i>--Favorite Books of 2002<br> <br> <i>Christian Science Monitor</i>--Best Books 2002<br> <br> <i>Publishers Weekly</i>--Best Books of 2002<br> <br> <i>The Cleveland Plain Dealer</i>--Year's Best Books<br> <br> <i>Minneapolis Star Tribune</i>--Standout Books of 2002<br> <br> 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.<br> <br> Acclaimed as a masterpiece around the world, <i>Gould's Book of Fish</i> 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.</b>