Visitants is short, lyrical and at the same time deeply meditated, written in transparent prose by a poet who never poeticizes but knows all the resources of language … [It is] clear that Visitants is the product both of specialized knowledge and of deeply felt personal experience….

A relatively simple plot is embedded in an elaborately wrought narration. The story purports to be told by the five witnesses to the inquiry into the death of Alistair Cawdor…. With great technical skill, the point of view shifts between three Papuans and two Australians, the transitions which are the major potential difficulty in such treatment being managed without apparent effort. Randolph Stow has devised an individual style for each of his witnesses, so that after a time there is little difficulty in remembering whose viewpoint we are sharing. At the same time he has imposed an overall unity on the novel...