AustLit

'Powerful and relentless, the hunger pursues you like a wild beast without respite. You can resist it for hours, even days, but it eventually overwhelms your reason with its desperate desire to be satisfied.

'Eat or be eaten ... that was the terrible choice facing the eight convict bolters from Macquarie Harbour, Australia's most remote and brutal penal colony. Lost and starving after a week in a wilderness no white man had ever crossed, order breaks down when one finally gives voice to their secret thoughts, "I could eat a piece of a man."

'Soon betrayal, lies and murder reign and the convicts start to fear each other more than the spears of the Aborigines. Who'll be served next? Will any of them reach the settled areas alive?

'Bloodlust is the story of this terrible journey as seen through the eyes of Irishman Alexander Pearce, who discovers what happens when men are pushed past their limits and what lies in the dark shadows beyond.' (Publication summary)