The Company: The Story of a Murderer

The Company: The Story of a Murderer

by Arabella Edge (Author)

Synopsis

"I, Jeronimus, am a man of phials, a measurer of powders on bronze scales, a potion brewer, an opium and arsenic merchant. The primped and perfumed Amsterdam burghers came to me in droves requiring cures for fevers, love balms, the miscarriage of a bastard child and, of course, poisons. Ah, poisons...". "The Company" is based on the true story of a Dutch East India flagship, the Batavia, which foundered off the coast of Western Australia in 1629. Jeronimus Cornelisz, a thirty-year-old apothecary with murder, mutiny, rape and torture on his mind, assumes command of the survivors, who all thought they were lucky to be alive. With Cornelisz in control, however, an extraordinary reign of terror begins, leaving those who survived wishing they had gone down with the ship. 'Elegant and hypnotically malevolent' - Kate Grenville, winner of the Orange Prize 2001. 'A compelling and utterly original story of shipwreck, madness and evil. It is written in gorgeous prose ...and features a splendidly ruthless villain. A fine, dark novel' - Patrick McGrath.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 371
Edition: paperback / softback
Publisher: Picador
Published: 01 Aug 2003

ISBN 10: 0330489798
ISBN 13: 9780330489799
Prizes: Winner of The Commonwealth Writer's Prize Best First Book SE Asia and South Pacific 2001.

Media Reviews
'Elegant and hypnotically malevolent' Kate Grenville, winner of the Orange Prize 2001
Author Bio
Arabella Edge studied at Bristol University and left for Australia in 1992. Her first novel, The Company, won Best First Book in the 2001 Commonwealth Writer's Prize in the South Pacific region, and was shortlisted for Australia's Miles Franklin Award 2001. She has since written The Raft and Fields of Ice, which was published in 2011. She lives with her husband Nick Gaze on the east coast of Tasmania.