'In the 1840s, a ship's boy cast ashore in northern Australia is taken in by Aborigines; 16 years later he steps out of the bush and inadvertently confronts the new white settlers with their unspoken terrors. this dramatisation of an edge-of-the-world encounter between the "civilised" and the "primitive" is outstanding: a deft and economical evocation of an entire nascent society, punctuated by moments of dazzling, revelatory language and unforgettable images.' Independent on Sunday