Author: Peter Carey
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307764257
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 1001
Book Description
In Australian slang, an illywhacker is a country fair con man, an unprincipled seller of fake diamonds and dubious tonics. And Herbert Badgery, the 139-year-old narrator of Peter Carey's uproarious novel, may be the king of them all. Vagabond and charlatan, aviator and car salesman, seducer and patriarch, Badgery is a walking embodiment of the Australian national character—espcially of its proclivity for tall stories and barefaced lies. As Carey follows this charming scoundrel across a continent and a century, he creates a crazy quilt of outlandish encounters, with characters that include a genteel dowager who fends off madness with an electric belt and a ravishing young girl with a dangerous fondness for rooftop trysts. Boldly inventive, irresistibly odd, Illywhacker is further proof that Peter Carey is one of the most enchanting writers at work in any hemisphere.
Illywhacker
Author: Peter Carey
Publisher: Faber & Faber
ISBN: 0571267092
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 902
Book Description
An illywhacker is a confidence trickster, and Herbert Badgery, the 139-year-old narrator of this dazzling comic novel, may be the king of them all. Vagabond and charlatan, aviator and car salesman, seducer and patriarch, Badgery travels across the Australian continent and a century in a picaresque novel full of outlandish encounters and dangerous characters. Overflowing with magic, jokes and inventions, Illywhacker is a contemporary classic.
Publisher: Faber & Faber
ISBN: 0571267092
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 902
Book Description
An illywhacker is a confidence trickster, and Herbert Badgery, the 139-year-old narrator of this dazzling comic novel, may be the king of them all. Vagabond and charlatan, aviator and car salesman, seducer and patriarch, Badgery travels across the Australian continent and a century in a picaresque novel full of outlandish encounters and dangerous characters. Overflowing with magic, jokes and inventions, Illywhacker is a contemporary classic.
Illywhacker
Author: Peter Carey
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307764257
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 1001
Book Description
In Australian slang, an illywhacker is a country fair con man, an unprincipled seller of fake diamonds and dubious tonics. And Herbert Badgery, the 139-year-old narrator of Peter Carey's uproarious novel, may be the king of them all. Vagabond and charlatan, aviator and car salesman, seducer and patriarch, Badgery is a walking embodiment of the Australian national character—espcially of its proclivity for tall stories and barefaced lies. As Carey follows this charming scoundrel across a continent and a century, he creates a crazy quilt of outlandish encounters, with characters that include a genteel dowager who fends off madness with an electric belt and a ravishing young girl with a dangerous fondness for rooftop trysts. Boldly inventive, irresistibly odd, Illywhacker is further proof that Peter Carey is one of the most enchanting writers at work in any hemisphere.
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307764257
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 1001
Book Description
In Australian slang, an illywhacker is a country fair con man, an unprincipled seller of fake diamonds and dubious tonics. And Herbert Badgery, the 139-year-old narrator of Peter Carey's uproarious novel, may be the king of them all. Vagabond and charlatan, aviator and car salesman, seducer and patriarch, Badgery is a walking embodiment of the Australian national character—espcially of its proclivity for tall stories and barefaced lies. As Carey follows this charming scoundrel across a continent and a century, he creates a crazy quilt of outlandish encounters, with characters that include a genteel dowager who fends off madness with an electric belt and a ravishing young girl with a dangerous fondness for rooftop trysts. Boldly inventive, irresistibly odd, Illywhacker is further proof that Peter Carey is one of the most enchanting writers at work in any hemisphere.
Oscar and Lucinda
Author: Peter Carey
Publisher: Faber & Faber
ISBN: 0571267130
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 545
Book Description
Peter Carey's novel of the undeclared love between clergyman Oscar Hopkins and the heiress Lucinda Leplastrier is both a moving and beautiful love story and a historical tour de force set in Victorian times. Made for each other, the two are gamblers - one obsessive, the other compulsive - incapable of winning at the game of love.Oscar and Lucinda is now available as a Faber Modern Classics edition.
Publisher: Faber & Faber
ISBN: 0571267130
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 545
Book Description
Peter Carey's novel of the undeclared love between clergyman Oscar Hopkins and the heiress Lucinda Leplastrier is both a moving and beautiful love story and a historical tour de force set in Victorian times. Made for each other, the two are gamblers - one obsessive, the other compulsive - incapable of winning at the game of love.Oscar and Lucinda is now available as a Faber Modern Classics edition.
Parrot and Olivier in America
Author: Peter Carey
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307593010
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 401
Book Description
Parrot and Olivier in America has been shortlisted for the 2010 Man Booker Prize. From the two-time Booker Prize–winning author comes an irrepressibly funny new novel set in early nineteenth-century America. Olivier—an improvisation on the life of Alexis de Tocqueville—is the traumatized child of aristocratic survivors of the French Revolution. Parrot is the motherless son of an itinerant English printer. They are born on different sides of history, but their lives will be connected by an enigmatic one-armed marquis. When Olivier sets sail for the nascent United States—ostensibly to make a study of the penal system, but more precisely to save his neck from one more revolution—Parrot will be there, too: as spy for the marquis, and as protector, foe, and foil for Olivier. As the narrative shifts between the perspectives of Parrot and Olivier, between their picaresque adventures apart and together—in love and politics, prisons and finance, homelands and brave new lands—a most unlikely friendship begins to take hold. And with their story, Peter Carey explores the experiment of American democracy with dazzling inventiveness and with all the richness and surprise of characterization, imagery, and language that we have come to expect from this superlative writer.
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307593010
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 401
Book Description
Parrot and Olivier in America has been shortlisted for the 2010 Man Booker Prize. From the two-time Booker Prize–winning author comes an irrepressibly funny new novel set in early nineteenth-century America. Olivier—an improvisation on the life of Alexis de Tocqueville—is the traumatized child of aristocratic survivors of the French Revolution. Parrot is the motherless son of an itinerant English printer. They are born on different sides of history, but their lives will be connected by an enigmatic one-armed marquis. When Olivier sets sail for the nascent United States—ostensibly to make a study of the penal system, but more precisely to save his neck from one more revolution—Parrot will be there, too: as spy for the marquis, and as protector, foe, and foil for Olivier. As the narrative shifts between the perspectives of Parrot and Olivier, between their picaresque adventures apart and together—in love and politics, prisons and finance, homelands and brave new lands—a most unlikely friendship begins to take hold. And with their story, Peter Carey explores the experiment of American democracy with dazzling inventiveness and with all the richness and surprise of characterization, imagery, and language that we have come to expect from this superlative writer.
True History of the Kelly Gang
Author: Peter Carey
Publisher: Vintage Canada
ISBN: 0307368653
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 386
Book Description
SOONTO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE The international bestseller, Booker Prize winner, and winner of the 2001 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book. Out of 19th century Australia rides a hero of his people and a man for all nations: Ned Kelly, the son of poor Irish immigrants, viewed by the authorities as a thief (especially of horses) and, as a cold-blooded killer. To the people, though, he was a patriot hounded unfairly by rich English landlords and their stooges. In the end, Kelly and his so-called gang (his younger brother and two friends) led a massive police manhunt on a wild goose chase that lasted twenty months, in which Ned’s talents as a bushman were augmented by bank robberies and the support of nearly everyone not in a uniform. His one demand – for which he would have surrendered himself was his jailed mother’s freedom. Executed by hanging more than a century ago, speaking as if from the grave, Kelly still resonates as the most potent legend in the land down under.
Publisher: Vintage Canada
ISBN: 0307368653
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 386
Book Description
SOONTO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE The international bestseller, Booker Prize winner, and winner of the 2001 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book. Out of 19th century Australia rides a hero of his people and a man for all nations: Ned Kelly, the son of poor Irish immigrants, viewed by the authorities as a thief (especially of horses) and, as a cold-blooded killer. To the people, though, he was a patriot hounded unfairly by rich English landlords and their stooges. In the end, Kelly and his so-called gang (his younger brother and two friends) led a massive police manhunt on a wild goose chase that lasted twenty months, in which Ned’s talents as a bushman were augmented by bank robberies and the support of nearly everyone not in a uniform. His one demand – for which he would have surrendered himself was his jailed mother’s freedom. Executed by hanging more than a century ago, speaking as if from the grave, Kelly still resonates as the most potent legend in the land down under.
Peter Carey
Author: Mary Ellen Snodgrass
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786455721
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 357
Book Description
Peter Carey, writer of such celebrated works as Oscar and Lucinda, True History of the Kelly Gang, and His Illegal Self, is one of Australia's most critically acclaimed novelists. Deeply concerned with South Pacific culture, especially the lives of its most downtrodden citizens, Carey uses popular art as a tool for raising the consciousness of readers. This book provides an introduction to the author's life, as well as a guided overview of his body of work. Designed for the fan and scholar alike, this text features an alphabetized, fully-annotated listing of major terms in the Carey canon, including fictional characters, motifs, historical events, and themes. Additional features include a listing of headwords, a Carey history, 44 reading and writing topics, and bibliographies of primary and secondary sources. A comprehensive index is included.
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786455721
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 357
Book Description
Peter Carey, writer of such celebrated works as Oscar and Lucinda, True History of the Kelly Gang, and His Illegal Self, is one of Australia's most critically acclaimed novelists. Deeply concerned with South Pacific culture, especially the lives of its most downtrodden citizens, Carey uses popular art as a tool for raising the consciousness of readers. This book provides an introduction to the author's life, as well as a guided overview of his body of work. Designed for the fan and scholar alike, this text features an alphabetized, fully-annotated listing of major terms in the Carey canon, including fictional characters, motifs, historical events, and themes. Additional features include a listing of headwords, a Carey history, 44 reading and writing topics, and bibliographies of primary and secondary sources. A comprehensive index is included.
Theft: A Love Story
Author: Peter Carey
Publisher: Faber & Faber
ISBN: 0571267114
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 320
Book Description
Narrated by the twin voices of the artist Butcher Bones, and his 'damaged two-hundred-and-twenty-pound brother' Hugh, Theft: A Love Story once again displays Peter Carey's extraordinary flair for language. Ranging from the rural wilds of Australia to Manhattan via Tokyo, it is a brilliant and moving exploration of art, fraud, friendship and redemption.
Publisher: Faber & Faber
ISBN: 0571267114
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 320
Book Description
Narrated by the twin voices of the artist Butcher Bones, and his 'damaged two-hundred-and-twenty-pound brother' Hugh, Theft: A Love Story once again displays Peter Carey's extraordinary flair for language. Ranging from the rural wilds of Australia to Manhattan via Tokyo, it is a brilliant and moving exploration of art, fraud, friendship and redemption.
Bliss
Author: Peter Carey
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307787222
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 390
Book Description
For thirty-nine years Harry Joy has been the quintessential good guy. But one morning Harry has a heart attack on his suburban front lawn, and, for the space of nine minutes, he becomes a dead guy. And although he is resuscitated, he will never be the same. For, as Peter Carey makes abundantly clear in this darkly funny novel, death is sometimes a necessary prelude to real life. Part The Wizard of Oz, part Dante's Inferno, and part Australian Book of the Dead, Bliss is a triumph of uninhibited storytelling from a writer of extravagan gifts.
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307787222
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 390
Book Description
For thirty-nine years Harry Joy has been the quintessential good guy. But one morning Harry has a heart attack on his suburban front lawn, and, for the space of nine minutes, he becomes a dead guy. And although he is resuscitated, he will never be the same. For, as Peter Carey makes abundantly clear in this darkly funny novel, death is sometimes a necessary prelude to real life. Part The Wizard of Oz, part Dante's Inferno, and part Australian Book of the Dead, Bliss is a triumph of uninhibited storytelling from a writer of extravagan gifts.
Jack Maggs
Author: Peter Carey
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307426440
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 370
Book Description
The Booker Prize-winning author of Oscar and Lucinda returns to the nineteenth century in an utterly captivating mystery. The year is 1837 and a stranger is prowling London. He is Jack Maggs, an illegal returnee from the prison island of Australia. He has the demeanor of a savage and the skills of a hardened criminal, and he is risking his life on seeking vengeance and reconciliation. Installing himself within the household of the genteel grocer Percy Buckle, Maggs soon attracts the attention of a cross section of London society. Saucy Mercy Larkin wants him for a mate. The writer Tobias Oates wants to possess his soul through hypnosis. But Maggs is obsessed with a plan of his own. And as all the various schemes converge, Maggs rises into the center, a dark looming figure, at once frightening, mysterious, and compelling. Not since Caleb Carr's The Alienist have the shadowy city streets of the nineteenth century lit up with such mystery and romance.
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307426440
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 370
Book Description
The Booker Prize-winning author of Oscar and Lucinda returns to the nineteenth century in an utterly captivating mystery. The year is 1837 and a stranger is prowling London. He is Jack Maggs, an illegal returnee from the prison island of Australia. He has the demeanor of a savage and the skills of a hardened criminal, and he is risking his life on seeking vengeance and reconciliation. Installing himself within the household of the genteel grocer Percy Buckle, Maggs soon attracts the attention of a cross section of London society. Saucy Mercy Larkin wants him for a mate. The writer Tobias Oates wants to possess his soul through hypnosis. But Maggs is obsessed with a plan of his own. And as all the various schemes converge, Maggs rises into the center, a dark looming figure, at once frightening, mysterious, and compelling. Not since Caleb Carr's The Alienist have the shadowy city streets of the nineteenth century lit up with such mystery and romance.
Just Relations
Author: Rodney Hall
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
ISBN: 1742699855
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 516
Book Description
Once a wild goldmining town, Whitey's Fall is now a small, brooding community of close and distant relations. One by one, the young are leaving for the alluring uncertainties of the world beyond. The old stay on, steadfast in their pride and sense of belonging. Remembering is their religion; the mountain is their altar. They are the guardians of the land's unbroken promise. But time brings strangers with different dreams, a different sense of justice. And their coming is a violation, a breakfast for parasites.
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
ISBN: 1742699855
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 516
Book Description
Once a wild goldmining town, Whitey's Fall is now a small, brooding community of close and distant relations. One by one, the young are leaving for the alluring uncertainties of the world beyond. The old stay on, steadfast in their pride and sense of belonging. Remembering is their religion; the mountain is their altar. They are the guardians of the land's unbroken promise. But time brings strangers with different dreams, a different sense of justice. And their coming is a violation, a breakfast for parasites.