Out of Ireland, by Christopher Koch (Vintage, £7.99 in UK)

'Poetic, subtle, suspenseful, grave" - Out of Ireland arrives on Irish soil garlanded with antipodean praise. Its author, Christopher Koch, is a Tasmanian of Irish, Prussian and English descent, and his theme is the suffering of the unfortunates who were deported to Van Diemen's Land, a subject to which Australians have only recently warmed, which may explain some of the enthusiasm. On this side of the global pond, his tale of an aristocratic Young Irelander, Robert Devereux, may be given a cooler reception; certainly it's solidly written, the harsh landscapes in which it is set are vividly evoked, and the nuances of 19th-century society are carefully recreated (think Patrick O'Brian on land), but it's hard to envisage a contemporary Irish audience taking to a book which sees fit to explain - for example- that a character with a Wicklow accent would say "deloight" instead of "delight".