Daniel Rooke, soldier and astronomer, was always an outsider. As a young lieutenant of marines he arrives in New South Wales on the First Fleet in 1788 and sees his chance. He sets up his observatory away from the main camp, and begins the scientific work that he hopes will make him famous.

Aboriginal people soon start to visit his isolated promontory, and a child named Tagaran begins to teach him her language. With meticulous care he records their conversations. An extraordinary friendship forms, and Rooke has almost forgotten he is a soldier when a man is fatally wounded in the infant colony. The lieutenant faces a decision that will define not only who he is but the course of his entire life.

In this profoundly moving novel Kate Grenville returns to the landscape of her much-loved bestseller The Secret River. Inspired by the notebooks of William Dawes, The Lieutenant is a compelling story about friendship and self-discovery by a writer at the peak of her powers.

Kate Grenville speaks about The Lieutenant

Praise for The Lieutenant:

‘The Lieutenant…has a potency and beauty that lingers in both the heart and mind’s eye…Grenville never labours the themes of her book and indeed The Lieutenant is characterised by her elegant restraint. The scenes between Rooke and Tagaran are superbly written, and Grenville conveys not only the sense of true kinship that grows between them, but also the euphoria of connection and understanding between two people from different universes. This is the essence of an Australian novel that visits a part of Australian black-white history and finds a true heart of goodness there,’

— Lucy Clark, Sunday Telegraph

‘Rooke and Tagaran…develop together the first stumbling vocabulary and grammar of an indigenous Australian language for English speakers…This exploration project, undertaken marvelously as a language adventure, is an Australian fiction delight…Grenville hasn’t written a historical novel. She has written astutely about dark hearts today.’ Nigel Krauth, Australian,

— Nigel Krauth, Australian

‘In lucid prose and perfectly measured strides, Grenville lays down her riveting tale. A novel aglow with empathy, its author’s capacious visions still deliver an elemental thrill.’

— Daily Mail (UK)

‘The encounters between Rooke and the Gadigal, especially a young girl called Tagaran, are wonderfully shimmering and authentic…gripping, I couldn’t put it down.’

— Weekend Herald [NZ]

‘It glows with life: imaginative in its recreations, respectful of what cannot be imagined, and thoughtful in its interrogation of the past…The Lieutenant is also Grenville’s most intellectually sophisticated novel to date.'

— Kerryn Goldsworthy, Age

‘An extraordinary adventure into the nature of language, culture and human communication. It is also a thrilling alternative history of modern Australia’s beginnings…Grenville’s great victory in this book is to show us that language is so much more than vocabulary or even grammar and syntax…Grenville’s writing is so clear as to be transparent…All in all, an epiphanous book, her best, I think.’

— Listener