博客來THE WATCHMAKER OF SYDNEY COVE
London, 1812. William Thorne understands the world through gears, springs, and the uncompromising laws of physics. As a master watchmaker, he believes that every life has its place in a grand, orderly machine. But a single moment of perceived injustice - a stolen precision compass - snaps the mainspring of his existence. Together with his younger brother Thomas, he is torn from the fog-drenched streets of Fleet Street and cast into the iron-bound hell of a convict ship.
Destination: New South Wales. The edge of the world.
In the brutal heat of the penal colony, names are discarded and men are reduced to mere cogs in the machinery of the Empire. But William and Thomas refuse to be ground down. Driven by a bond stronger than the chains of Parramatta, they dare the impossible: an escape into the supposedly impenetrable Blue Mountains.
Beyond the reach of the Crown, they find no paradise, but a world of red dust and absolute silence. While surveyors attempt to trap the wilderness in rigid squares and civilization casts its nets, the brothers become shadows in the hinterland. William begins to realize that one cannot measure time when fighting for survival-and that true freedom means evading the geometry of men to become part of the geology of the land.
A hauntingly beautiful epic of survival, The Watchmaker of Sydney Cove is a novel about the mechanics of hope, the statics of brotherhood, and the realization that while men can build clocks, only the mountains can tell the truth about time.
