The Company

Jeronimus Cornelisz, a thirty-year-old apothecary, has slipped aboard the Batavia, flagship of a Dutch East India Company fleet bound for the Indies, to escape the consequences of his crimes in Amsterdam. When the ship strikes a reef off Australia's west coast in 1629, the survivors are put ashore on bare islands, and the commander leaves with the skipper in the one seaworthy boat to fetch help. Cornelisz, who believes he is destined to rule over men, becomes leader in their absence and wins the castaways' trust, then uses a band of spoiled merchants' sons to rule them by fear and murder. Told in the present tense in his own voice, the forty-day ordeal alternates with memories of his brutal father, his pious mother and his mentor, the painter Torrentius.

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About the book

Form

Novel

Genres

Historical, Crime (assigned by AI)

Set in

Australia, Netherlands, 1629

First published

2000

ISBN

9780330362207 (Picador, Australia)

9780743213424 (Simon & Schuster, United States)

9780743419185 (Simon & Schuster, United States)

9780330489799 (Picador, United Kingdom)

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Wikidata