AN ‘OLIVER TWIST’ SEQUEL SET IN 19TH CENTURY AUSTRALIA
WRITTEN BY NORMAN ESHLEY & ELIZABETH REVILL
With ‘The Artful Dodger’ set to premiere on Disney+ on November 29th and renditions of ‘Oliver Twist’ a firm favourite in the festive period, Oak Tree Books invites readers to discover a very different follow-up to the Dickens classic; one with a historical twist.
Oliver Twist has been rescued and is safe and well. Bill Sikes is dead. Fagin is in prison under sentence of death by hanging. His gang of pickpockets and thieves has been disbanded.
One of the gang, Jack Dawkins, is in Newgate prison awaiting transportation to Australia. His crime? Theft of a silver snuffbox. What happens to him is the story of a young man trying his best to survive in the harshest of worlds. How does he fare?
It is not for nothing that Jack Dawkins is known as the Artful Dodger!
‘The Dreamtime of the Artful Dodger’ is available now in paperback, hardback, and eBook from Oak Tree Books. This unique follow-up to ‘Oliver Twist’ blends imagination and actuality; placing a fictional thief in amongst a realistic depiction of 19th century Australia.
“One day I simply thought “I wonder what happened to the Artful Dodger?” says co-author Norman Eshley. The thought ignited a dormant creative spark in the actor-turned-author and he got to writing. Originally imagined as a script, it was film producer David Parfitt (‘Shakespeare in Love’) who suggested the concept be turned into a book, with Eshley eventually collaborating with co-author Elizabeth Revill on the story.
‘The Dreamtime of the Artful Dodger’ not only explores the fate of one of literature’s most famous scoundrels, placing the fictional anti-hero into a very real historical scenario — one that highlights the plight of both prisoners and Aboriginal people living in 19th century Australia.
“Putting a famous fictional character into real situations was fascinating and because of the research it almost wrote itself,” says Eshley. “I started doing research [for the book] and was horrified by the things I discovered. The treatment of the prisoners was dreadful, but even worse was the treatment of the Aboriginals.”
A star of stage and screen, Eshley rose to fame with roles in films such as ‘The Immortal Story’ (directed by Orson Welles) and 1980s British comedy classic ‘George and Mildred’. More recently, the actor has appeared in BBC’s ‘New Tricks’ and Starz miniseries ‘The White Princess’ however Eshley, by his own admission, “mooched around for years and did nothing creative” for a while before his imagination was truly reawakened by the story that would become ‘The Dreamtime of The Artful Dodger’.
The book has been praised by readers the world over for its take on the characters, its setting and its unique perspective. “I found I was transported to this unfamiliar life, with dramatic scenery, intrigue, captivating characters, and social and racial injustice,” says one reader in a glowing review. Another describes the book as “An imaginative follow on in the rest of the life of the Artful Dodger and his time after the end of Oliver Twist's story.”
EBOOK, PAPERBACK, AND HARDBACK AVAILABLE NOW VIA OAK TREE BOOKS
ORDER FROM AMAZON: https://amzn.to/3G1bUEi
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