The Servants, will be published in February 2027 by Summit Books (an imprint of Simon & Schuster). Read more here. This novel is based on the true story of Governor Lachlan Macquarie’s Indian servant, George Jarvis, and the other Indian servants in the early colony of New South Wales.
Roanna’s current project, of which her novel The Servants is a part, is set in India, Australia, the UK (England, Scotland) and Ireland between 1795 and 1825. This project explores the histories of the communities colonised by the British Empire, the ways in which these communities “love” back, the hierarchies of power and obligation between colonised and coloniser, the histories of trans-Indian Ocean slavery and slavery within India, particularly in relation to capitalism and the trade routes of the British Empire.
Roanna’s work is made of other imagined histories, in conversation with the playful and precise imaginative labour of so many writers of fiction and poetry. Their contemporary imaginings of our personal and collective pasts have fed the development of this long, laborious ongoing project. These writers include Michelle de Kretser (particularly The Rose Grower, The Hamilton Case, Questions of Travel and Scary Monsters), N.S. Madhavan (particularly Litanies of Dutch Battery) , Salman Rushdie (particularly Midnight’s Children), Arundhati Roy (particularly The God of Small Things), Penelope Fitzgerald (The Blue Flower), Jock Serong (particularly Preservation and The Burning Island), Rashida Murphy (The Historian’s Daughter), Laila Lalami (particularly The Moor’s Account) and the work of the poets Eunice de Souza, Arundhati Subramaniam, Gwen Harwood, Elizabeth Bishop, Ada Limón, Eileen Chong, Imtiaz Dharker, Russell Jones, TBC
Roanna’s work is based on, and in conversation with, the meticulous research of many historians, particularly Robin Walsh (Australia), Devleena Ghosh (Australia and India), Grace Karskens (Australia), Jo Currie (Scotland), Tom Devine (Scotland), Mairi MacArthur (Scotland), P. Sanal Mohan (India), A. Sreedhara Menon (India), K. Sardamoni (India), A. R. Venkatachalapathy (India), Teótonio de Souza (India), Indrani Chatterjee (India/UK/USA), Pedro Machado (South Africa/ USA) Andrea Major (India/UK), Manu Pillai (India), William Dalrymple (UK, India) and many others.
The creative fruits of this ongoing project are listed below. This project has been generously supported by the School of the Arts and Media at UNSW, Creative Australia (formerly the Australia Council for the Arts), the UNSW Copyright Agency writer-in-residence fellowship, the Bundanon writing residency, and the Bridge Awards’ inaugural Varuna Cove Park Writing Residency in Scotland.
Publications arising from this project
- Gonsalves, R. 2027 (Forthcoming), The Servants, (a novel) Summit Books (Simon & Schuster)
- Gonsalves, R. 2020, ‘The East Australia Company Mango Bridge’ a short story in After Australia, an anthology of speculative fiction edited by Michael Mohammed Ahmed, Affirm Press in partnership with Diversity Arts Australia and Sweatshop Literacy Movement, June 2020. (short story)
- Gonsalves, R, 2019, ‘A breeze blows, or it doesn’t blow: History’s beckonings’, Southerly 78.2, March 2019 (a short piece of cross-generic fiction and nonfiction)
- Gonsalves, R, 2017, George Jarvis, black hindoo servant, Port Jackson, 1809 (Preparatory Study): Westerly, 62.2 pp. 150-154, December 2017 (short story)
Media about this project: Read/Listen
- ‘How Indian servants brought to Australia lived and survived in the 19th century’ Interview with Roanna Gonsalves by Kumud Merani, SBS Hindi Radio (interview in English) Friday 14 November, 2019.
- ‘The curious story of George Jarvis’ article in Indian Link by Hamida Parkar, published on September 12, 2018
Public talks/Workshops /Artist spotlights
- ‘My Time Has Not Expired’: Artist Spotlight, Intermedial Composition Network, UNSW, September 20, 2024: https://www.unsw.edu.au/arts-design-architecture/our-schools/arts-media/our-research/research-hubs-networks/intermedial-composition-network > Past Events > Artist Spotlight: Roanna Gonsalves – September 2024.
- ‘Finding George Jarvis’. Historian Robin Walsh and author Roanna Gonsalves will explore different approaches to finding the elusive figure of George Jarvis, Governor Macquarie’s Indian manservant. Parramatta Lecture Series, Tales From The East, a public exhibition by the National Trust of Australia, exploring the historical and contemporary links between India and New South Wales. UNE Parramatta Campus Lecture Theatre, Level 1, 232 Church Street, Parramatta.Saturday, August 18, 2018. Read a reworked version of the speech here.
