The Servants

What could I tell you about George Jarvis except that he was an enslaved black Hindoo servant, born in India, one of many, what do I care ... I will tell you our story in the language of your time ...

The year 1810 in the colony of New South Wales: George Jarvis has just arrived with his master, the newly appointed Governor Lachlan Macquarie. Having been in Macquarie’s service all over the world for more than a decade, George now wants permission to return to India to find his mother.

In Sydney, he is reunited with Shammy, who was bought along with him at the age of five. While George is torn between yearning to see his mother and compulsive loyalty to the Scotsman who has been like a father to him, Shammy is a fierce advocate for freedom. She too is a servant, but she bows and scrapes to no one. A woman of immense intelligence, she has big plans and the determination to carry them out. But there will be unforeseeable consequences of her fiery ambition …

This highly original, audacious novel reimagines a crucial period in Australia’s history from the perspective of the vanquished, and tells a wider tale of the slave trade across the British empire. It repaints a whitewashed era in all the richness of the servants’ heritage and coats it with a wickedly witty takedown of the colonisers and their hypocrisy.

‘Here is early Sydney as you’ve never seen it. Roanna Gonsalves’s vision is original and thrilling. This novel is an astonishment. A firework. A gamechanger.’ Michelle de Kretser, winner of the Stella Prize and 2 Miles Franklin Awards