Peter Carey has been one of my favourite writers since the 1980s, and I decided this year that I would re-read all of his books in chronological order.įirst, a bit of context. In the years since he has written My Life as a Fake, Theft, His Illegal Self and Parrot and Oliver in America (shortlisted for 2010 Man Booker Prize). In 2003 he joined Hunter College as the Director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing.

He collaborated on the screenplay of the film Until the End of the World with Wim Wenders.

During these years he wrote The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith, Jack Maggs, and True History of the Kelly Gang for which he won his second Booker Prize. Later he would have similar jobs at Princeton, The New School and Barnard College. In 1990 he moved to New York where he completed The Tax Inspector. Uncomfortable with this success he began work on The Tax Inspector. Illywhacker was short listed for the Booker Prize. It was during this period that he wrote War Crimes, Bliss, Illywhacker, Oscar and Lucinda. Thus between 19, he was able to pursue literature obsessively. This slim book made him an overnight success.įrom 1976 Carey worked one week a month for Grey Advertising, then, in 1981 he established a small business where his generous partner required him to work only two afternoons a week. He was nineteen.įor the next thirteen years he wrote fiction at night and weekends, working in many advertising agencies in Melbourne, London and Sydney.Īfter four novels had been written and rejected The Fat Man in History - a short story collection - was published in 1974. He was then employed by an advertising agency where he began to receive his literary education, meeting Faulkner, Joyce, Kerouac and other writers he had previously been unaware of. In 1961 he studied science for a single unsuccessful year at Monash University. He was a student there between 19 - after Rupert Murdoch had graduated and before Prince Charles arrived. He was educated at the local state school until the age of eleven and then became a boarder at Geelong Grammar School. Peter Carey was born in Australia in 1943. Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

A Million Dollars’ Worth of Amphetamines Life & Death in the South Side Pavilion The stories, persuasive and precisely crafted, reveal Carey to be a moralist with a sense of humour, a surrealist interested in naturalism and an urban poet delighting in paradox. He is also a dazzling writer of short stories and this volume collects together all the stories from The Fat Man in History and War Crimes as well as three other stories not previously published in book form. Peter Carey is justly renowned for his novels, which have included the Booker Prize-winning titles Oscar and Lucinda and True History of the Kelly Gang.

Peter carey bliss review