Summit Books acquires “The Servants” by Roanna Gonsalves
Summit Books Australia has acquired ANZ rights to Roanna Gonsalves’s debut novel, The Servants, via Benython Oldfield at Zeitgeist Agency.
The colony of New South Wales, 1810: George Jarvis has arrived with his master, Governor Lachlan Macquarie. Having been in Macquarie’s service for more than a decade, George wants permission to return to India to find his mother.
In Sydney, he is reunited with Shammy, who was bought along with him at the age of 5. Shammy is a fierce advocate for freedom, but there will be unforeseeable consequences of her ambition.
The Servants reimagines a crucial period in Australia from the perspective of the vanquished and tells a wider tale of the slave trade across the British empire. It repaints a whitewashed era in all the richness of the servants’ heritage and coats it with a witty takedown of the colonisers.
Summit Books publishing director Jane Palfreyman said, “The Servants is an electrifying and elegant novel as well as an incendiary political document. Roanna is a writer of extraordinary talent: such subversive playfulness alongside an intensely moving narrative; granular, mesmerising detail underpinning the epic sweep of world history; indelible characters and settings and a spirit that will not be denied.”
Gonsalves was born and raised in India, and moved to Australia in 1998. She is a senior lecturer in creative writing at UNSW and edits Southerly. Her short story collection, The Permanent Resident (UWA Publishing, 2016), won the Multicultural NSW Award at the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards.
Gonsalves said, “I wanted to tell this story as boldly as possible, using fiction to speak truths that have previously been silenced, particularly about the trans-Indian Ocean slave trade and its repercussions across Australia, India, Scotland and the wider British empire. I have spent 16 years working on this story. I can’t wait for this book to be out in the world and to hear what readers have to say about it.”
The Servants will be published by Summit Books Australia (Simon & Schuster) in print, audio and ebook in February 2027.
Category: Acquisitions
