William Golding

Edmund Talbot recounts his voyage from England to the Antipodes, and the humiliating confrontation between the stern Captain Anderson and the nervous parson, James Colley, which leads to the latter's death.

Rites of Passage

On board a warship bound for Australia, Edmund Talbot writes a journal to entertain his godfather back in England, recording the mounting tensions with wit and disdain. Then one passenger, an obsequious clergyman, attracts the animosity of the crew.

Andrew John Kinney

Read this thirty years ago; it is the book for which Golding won the Nobel, and in my view he earned it. It is so much better than Lord of the Flies. The other two books in the series are good, but this one is the best. I love the early 19th Century dialogue, and the description of the burial at sea is particularly entertaining.

Rites of Passage

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