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Birds of Passage
Birds of Passage is the powerful and haunting story of Seamus O'Young, an Australina-born Chinese, on a collision course with the past.
He reconstructs his past through the eyes of Shan, an ancestor who came to Australia in the 1880s. And, just as Shan was driven from the goldfields by depravity, racism and sheer greed; so Seamus finds himself, a century later, fighting for his own life and sanity.
He reconstructs his past through the eyes of Shan, an ancestor who came to Australia in the 1880s. And, just as Shan was driven from the goldfields by depravity, racism and sheer greed; so Seamus finds himself, a century later, fighting for his own life and sanity.
212 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1983
4 people are currently reading
77 people want to read
About the author
Brian Castro
23 books18 followersBrian Castro was born in Hong Kong in 1950 of Portuguese, Chinese and English parents. He was sent to boarding school in Australia in 1961 (1962, Oakhill College, Castle Hill / 1963-67, St Joseph's College, Hunter's Hill.). He attended the University of Sydney from 1968-71 and won the Sydney University short story competition in 1970. He gained his BA Dip.Ed. in 1972 and his MA in 1976 from Sydney University.
He was joint winner of the Australian/Vogel literary award for his first novel Birds of Passage (1983), which has been translated into French and Chinese. This was followed by Pomeroy (1990), Double-Wolf (1991), winner of The Age Fiction Prize, the Victorian Premier's Innovatory Writing Award and the Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction, and subsequently After China (1992), which again won the Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction at the 1993 Victorian Premier's Awards. This was also subsequently translated into French and Chinese. His fifth novel, Drift, was published in July 1994. His sixth novel Stepper won the 1997 National Book Council 'Banjo' Prize for fiction. In 1999 he published a collection of essays, Looking For Estrellita (University of Queensland Press). In 2003 Giramondo published his 'fictional autobiography', Shanghai Dancing, which won the Vance Palmer Prize at the 2003 Victorian Premier's Awards, the Christina Stead Prize at the 2004 NSW Premier’s Awards and was named the NSW Premier’s Book of the Year. His most recent novel, The Garden Book, published by Giramondo in 2005, was shortlisted for the 2006 Miles Franklin Literary Award and won the Queensland Premier's Prize for Fiction.
Brian Castro has worked in Australia, France and Hong Kong as a teacher and writer, and for several years was a literary reviewer for Asiaweek magazine. He wrote the text for The Lingerie Catalogue, a collaborative project with photomonteur Peter Lyssiotis. Castro also contributed the text Stones for Al-Kitab for a limited edition work by Peter Lyssiotis entitled A Gardener At Midnight, produced in 2004.
Brian Castro currently divides his time between Adelaide and Melbourne.
Two of his novels, Pomeroy and Stepper (Stepper, oder Die Kunst der Spionage) have been published in German by Klett Cotta. His novel After China (L’Architecte Chinois), was published by Editions de L’Aube in France in 2003.
(from http://www.lythrumpress.com.au/castro...)
He was joint winner of the Australian/Vogel literary award for his first novel Birds of Passage (1983), which has been translated into French and Chinese. This was followed by Pomeroy (1990), Double-Wolf (1991), winner of The Age Fiction Prize, the Victorian Premier's Innovatory Writing Award and the Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction, and subsequently After China (1992), which again won the Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction at the 1993 Victorian Premier's Awards. This was also subsequently translated into French and Chinese. His fifth novel, Drift, was published in July 1994. His sixth novel Stepper won the 1997 National Book Council 'Banjo' Prize for fiction. In 1999 he published a collection of essays, Looking For Estrellita (University of Queensland Press). In 2003 Giramondo published his 'fictional autobiography', Shanghai Dancing, which won the Vance Palmer Prize at the 2003 Victorian Premier's Awards, the Christina Stead Prize at the 2004 NSW Premier’s Awards and was named the NSW Premier’s Book of the Year. His most recent novel, The Garden Book, published by Giramondo in 2005, was shortlisted for the 2006 Miles Franklin Literary Award and won the Queensland Premier's Prize for Fiction.
Brian Castro has worked in Australia, France and Hong Kong as a teacher and writer, and for several years was a literary reviewer for Asiaweek magazine. He wrote the text for The Lingerie Catalogue, a collaborative project with photomonteur Peter Lyssiotis. Castro also contributed the text Stones for Al-Kitab for a limited edition work by Peter Lyssiotis entitled A Gardener At Midnight, produced in 2004.
Brian Castro currently divides his time between Adelaide and Melbourne.
Two of his novels, Pomeroy and Stepper (Stepper, oder Die Kunst der Spionage) have been published in German by Klett Cotta. His novel After China (L’Architecte Chinois), was published by Editions de L’Aube in France in 2003.
(from http://www.lythrumpress.com.au/castro...)
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
March 12, 2019
A thought provoking book that covers the parallel lives of a post WW2 ABC (Australian Born Chinese) and his ancestor, Shan, who came to Australia to seek his fortune during the gold rush of the late 1850’s to early 60’s. Seamus, the ABC, is born and bred in Australia and speaks no Chinese language at all but from the beginning senses his differences to Anglo Australians. When he, coincidently, finds some writing from an ancestor he ascertains to understand what it means and with that takes a parallel journey that leads to a frantic end.
The major theme running through the novel, for me at least, was one of Seamus searching for his identity and his past. The double narrative had me enthralled as the past and the present took similar routes. Both protagonists have to deal with their own fear and states of uncertainty as they deal with the inherent and violent racism of the past by Anglo Australians or the cultural misunderstandings of the modern equivalent.
Released in 1983 this was a fantastic debut by Brian Castro and I look forward to reading him further.
The major theme running through the novel, for me at least, was one of Seamus searching for his identity and his past. The double narrative had me enthralled as the past and the present took similar routes. Both protagonists have to deal with their own fear and states of uncertainty as they deal with the inherent and violent racism of the past by Anglo Australians or the cultural misunderstandings of the modern equivalent.
Released in 1983 this was a fantastic debut by Brian Castro and I look forward to reading him further.
April 26, 2020
Rly good book.. About seamus, an abc living in 80’s sydney and his translation journey of his ancestor shan’s diary, who came to aus during the 1850’s gold rush. Rly enlightening book on the history of all the chinese people who came to aus to work and the violence and racism they had to deal with. Wh*te people were encouraged to kill chinese goldfield workers (who had migrated to australia under the belief that there was plenty of gold to be found when in reality those were mostly rumours spread by europeans in hopes that chinese ppl would come [and they did!] meaning they could severely underpay them for their work AND extort them often for no reason. I said what i said) under the premise of moral duty or right ... and that’s institutionalised racism at its finest!
Honestly disgusting for its time and still disgusting today, but that’s not the end of it:
Weirdly enough, it’s no accident that the anti-chinese rhetoric of almost 200 yrs ago (!) mirrors today’s amidst covid paranoia (The idea that chinese people brought/bring diseases and were inherently unclean..) .... yuck!
Anyways, all of that aside for the time being.. Very atmospheric descriptions nd structurally sooooo interesting. The mirroring of two histories and their chaotic merging were soooo interesting to me, esp because it was so gradual. I also thought seamus’ gradual decline and withdrawal mirrored yeong-hye in han kang’s “the vegetarian” a lot. Not sure what point i’m making w that comparison but maybe it is something to do with societal withdrawal and that sort of feeling of never really being heard or microaggressions/othering that leads to such a fragmentation of self
N the writing was unexpectedly so fresh.. diaspora writing rly hit different sometimes and i love to see it..
And it’s amazing to read a book set in ur home country AND home city where the MAIN CHARACTER is someone whose cultural identity is something u can extremely relate to. There is just something about specific location and place that makes the details come alive so much more
My idea of my own cultural/national identity has been and still is so susceptible to change so i feel pretty grateful for the opportunity to have encountered this book.
V eager to read more of brian castro’s work!! I got this book at a random vinnies but i believe if u have access to a university library resource the chance u can find a brian castro work is quite likely. If not a book then maybe a journal article or anthology!
Cool to see some older abc work! I like to imagine that i’d one day be able to meet these abc authors somehow through like four degrees of separation maybe....
Honestly disgusting for its time and still disgusting today, but that’s not the end of it:
Weirdly enough, it’s no accident that the anti-chinese rhetoric of almost 200 yrs ago (!) mirrors today’s amidst covid paranoia (The idea that chinese people brought/bring diseases and were inherently unclean..) .... yuck!
Anyways, all of that aside for the time being.. Very atmospheric descriptions nd structurally sooooo interesting. The mirroring of two histories and their chaotic merging were soooo interesting to me, esp because it was so gradual. I also thought seamus’ gradual decline and withdrawal mirrored yeong-hye in han kang’s “the vegetarian” a lot. Not sure what point i’m making w that comparison but maybe it is something to do with societal withdrawal and that sort of feeling of never really being heard or microaggressions/othering that leads to such a fragmentation of self
N the writing was unexpectedly so fresh.. diaspora writing rly hit different sometimes and i love to see it..
And it’s amazing to read a book set in ur home country AND home city where the MAIN CHARACTER is someone whose cultural identity is something u can extremely relate to. There is just something about specific location and place that makes the details come alive so much more
My idea of my own cultural/national identity has been and still is so susceptible to change so i feel pretty grateful for the opportunity to have encountered this book.
V eager to read more of brian castro’s work!! I got this book at a random vinnies but i believe if u have access to a university library resource the chance u can find a brian castro work is quite likely. If not a book then maybe a journal article or anthology!
Cool to see some older abc work! I like to imagine that i’d one day be able to meet these abc authors somehow through like four degrees of separation maybe....
October 4, 2025
An interesting short novel with two interconnected stories. Seamus O’Young, an Australian born Chinese with blue eyes, in the present day, reconstructs his past through the eyes of his ancestors, Le Yun Shan, via Shan’s dairy which Seamus is slowly translating. Shan, a young teacher in China decides to travel to Australia, in search of gold, in 1956. He leaves his feuding clans. Shan’s mother and sister died and his father was an opium addict. Shan felt isolated. In Australia Shan faces prejudice and hardship. Any reward for finding gold for the Chinese is lost due to claim jumping by whites. Seamus is a young orphan. He lives in a foster home. He is quite ill. He describes the prejudice he experiences in the 1980s in Australia. Seamus looks Chinese and is treated like he is!
A book about the history of Chinese people who came to Australia to work and the violence and racism they had to deal with.
This debut novel was first published in 1983.
A book about the history of Chinese people who came to Australia to work and the violence and racism they had to deal with.
This debut novel was first published in 1983.
March 12, 2008
well i guess the important thing in this book is about identity (actually this words is came from my lecturer). Once you read this book, you'll see a twisted point of view from first person till the third person (thxfully, there is no fourth person point of view in a literature, or else i guess Mr. Brian will use that POV too,hehehehe), again the twisted is not the end, as we continue our reading we will find out the maganificant plot (you will be drag into flashback until to the future, fiuhhh). And its not it, as you drown yourself into the book, you will see the character-twisted roll, which is mean that you will find out the character on the future is also the same at the past (the differences of the year is almost a hundred year-how can be that possible???). in the end, you will decided which one is real, which story is real, and which character is real. So i guess my conclusion is, you will learn a lot about literature stuff in this book-charcater,plot,setting,etc.- And more important thing is you will learn more about identity in this book.
January 6, 2026
I have read some Brian Castro previous to tackling this, his first novel, and I have found his short allusive books to be thoughtful and interesting if not always entertaining in the generally accepted sense of that term.
Birds of Passage contains the intertwined stories of Shan and his descendent Seamus. Shan leaves China to find his fortunes on the Australian goldfields and is in turn shipwrecked, swindled, beaten and broken, eventually returning to his desolated village, but not before giving his European lover a son.
Seamus is an orphan, brought up by two alcoholic foster parents. He finds part of Shan's journal in the house his foster mother is living in, and he by turns becomes more and more immersed in the past until he tries to kill himself in Hill End, where his own and Shan's stories connect. Saved by his neighbour Anna, by the end of the book he is on the path back through the past into his own life.
Castro has packed a lot of meaning into this short book. Central is an investigation into what it means to be alien in your own culture. Seamus struggles with being identified as a "Ching Chong Chinaman" when he is truly Australian - he painfully teaches himself Chinese so that he can read Shan's journals, in which he discovers the casual brutality meted out to "Celestials" during the goldrush: Shan's friend Tzu is murdered by white men, and Shan sees his other acquaintances ruined by the way they were treated in Australia. Yet, like Seamus, Shan is an outsider in his own culture. He learns English, and eschews the base materialism of many of his countrymen. He takes a European lover, Mary, and has dreams of settling on the land. It is only when he kills to save his own life that he returns to China, and wonders how his son will get on in the new land.
Another theme in this book, and one central to Castro's oeuvre, is how people communicate (or fail to communicate) with each other. While Seamus develops a kind of mystical communication with Shan across time, as Shan does with "his reader", both Shan and Seamus struggle to communicate with those around them. Shan has the barrier of language that separates him from white folk and the barrier of sensibility that separates him from his fellow Chinese. Seamus struggles to communicate his feelings especially to those he loves - intriguingly two of the women he is attracted to in the book are dumb, as he himself becomes after his attempted suicide. Anna, who nurses him back to normality helps him re-discover his voice, as he helps her discover her own.
There are several moments throughout the book where characters muse on the inadequacy of human interaction - "In the spiritual sense, once you say something, it is no longer significant. It's the same with love, only it's experience that most often stands its way. It denies love its true expression. When you can't express love ideally, it languishes and wilts. When next you confront it, on the other side of experience, you find it alien; and yet it came from you, from your own soul."
In the end, it seems that both Shan and Seamus have failed to achieve what it was they set out to do - and yet it seems that they both have moved from a place of insecurity to one of acceptance, if not peace.
Birds of Passage was Castro's first novel - it won many accolades as have those that came after it. They were deserved - this is well-worth reading.
Check out my other reviews at http://aviewoverthebell.blogspot.com.au/
Birds of Passage contains the intertwined stories of Shan and his descendent Seamus. Shan leaves China to find his fortunes on the Australian goldfields and is in turn shipwrecked, swindled, beaten and broken, eventually returning to his desolated village, but not before giving his European lover a son.
Seamus is an orphan, brought up by two alcoholic foster parents. He finds part of Shan's journal in the house his foster mother is living in, and he by turns becomes more and more immersed in the past until he tries to kill himself in Hill End, where his own and Shan's stories connect. Saved by his neighbour Anna, by the end of the book he is on the path back through the past into his own life.
Castro has packed a lot of meaning into this short book. Central is an investigation into what it means to be alien in your own culture. Seamus struggles with being identified as a "Ching Chong Chinaman" when he is truly Australian - he painfully teaches himself Chinese so that he can read Shan's journals, in which he discovers the casual brutality meted out to "Celestials" during the goldrush: Shan's friend Tzu is murdered by white men, and Shan sees his other acquaintances ruined by the way they were treated in Australia. Yet, like Seamus, Shan is an outsider in his own culture. He learns English, and eschews the base materialism of many of his countrymen. He takes a European lover, Mary, and has dreams of settling on the land. It is only when he kills to save his own life that he returns to China, and wonders how his son will get on in the new land.
Another theme in this book, and one central to Castro's oeuvre, is how people communicate (or fail to communicate) with each other. While Seamus develops a kind of mystical communication with Shan across time, as Shan does with "his reader", both Shan and Seamus struggle to communicate with those around them. Shan has the barrier of language that separates him from white folk and the barrier of sensibility that separates him from his fellow Chinese. Seamus struggles to communicate his feelings especially to those he loves - intriguingly two of the women he is attracted to in the book are dumb, as he himself becomes after his attempted suicide. Anna, who nurses him back to normality helps him re-discover his voice, as he helps her discover her own.
There are several moments throughout the book where characters muse on the inadequacy of human interaction - "In the spiritual sense, once you say something, it is no longer significant. It's the same with love, only it's experience that most often stands its way. It denies love its true expression. When you can't express love ideally, it languishes and wilts. When next you confront it, on the other side of experience, you find it alien; and yet it came from you, from your own soul."
In the end, it seems that both Shan and Seamus have failed to achieve what it was they set out to do - and yet it seems that they both have moved from a place of insecurity to one of acceptance, if not peace.
Birds of Passage was Castro's first novel - it won many accolades as have those that came after it. They were deserved - this is well-worth reading.
Check out my other reviews at http://aviewoverthebell.blogspot.com.au/
November 19, 2023
Beautifully written, a brutal account of Australian history on the goldfields in the 1850's and the treatment suffered by the Chinese miners, colliding with the identity of real time Australian born Chinese man, Seamus, as he struggles to work out his position in life. Hard to read at times but always riveting. Still don't know why Seamus ended up in a wheelchair, must have missed something on the way. Can anyone enlighten me??
May 31, 2008
Some obscure Australian classic I had to read for an English class. It's sometimes interesting, just not really my thing.
Ideas:
- transracial identity
- different perspectives
Ideas:
- transracial identity
- different perspectives
January 15, 2011
my auntie gave me this book to read.
story about an 'Australian born Chinese' guy who finds the story of a goldrushee..
lots of spooky parallels between the stories of the 2 protagonists.
story about an 'Australian born Chinese' guy who finds the story of a goldrushee..
lots of spooky parallels between the stories of the 2 protagonists.
April 28, 2012
That was the best Australian novel I read recently.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews