The Transit of Venus is one of the great English-language novels of
the twentieth century. - The Paris Review
Finalist for the National Book Award
Winner of the National Book Critics' Circle Award
The award-winning, New York Times bestselling literary masterpiece of
Shirley Hazzard--the story of two beautiful orphan sisters whose fates
are as moving and wonderful, and yet as predestined, as the transits of
the planets themselves
The Transit of Venus is considered Shirley Hazzard's most brilliant
novel. It tells the story of two orphan sisters, Caroline and Grace
Bell, as they leave Australia to start a new life in post-war England.
What happens to these young women--seduction and abandonment, marriage
and widowhood, love and betrayal--becomes as moving and wonderful and
yet as predestined as the transits of the planets themselves. Gorgeously
written and intricately constructed, Hazzard's novel is a story of
place: Sydney, London, New York, Stockholm; of time: from the fifties to
the eighties; and above all, of women and men in their passage through
the displacements and absurdities of modern life.