Peter Carey

Australian novelist, twice winner of the Booker Prize...

Carey was born in Bacchus Marsh, Victoria, Australia, in 1943. He studied Science at Monash University, and worked in advertising during the early part of his writing career. Australian national identity and history are key themes in his novels.

He began with short stories, and published two collections, War Crimes, and The Fat Man in History. These stories, along with three previously uncollected works, are all included in his Collected Stories.

His first three novels were Bliss; Illywhacker, an epic novel of Australian history explored through the life of a centegenarian con-man or "illywhacker"; and Oscar and Lucinda (1988), an allegory of the arrival of Christianity in Australia. There are, arguably, some elements of science fiction in his writing, particularly in Illywhacker, and this novel received the Ditmar Award for Best Australian Science Fiction Novel and was shortlisted for the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel, in 1986. Illywhacker was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1985, and three years later, Oscar and Lucinda won the prize.

While writing his novel, The Tax Inspector, Peter Carey moved to the US, and has since written four further novels: The Unusual Life of Tristran Smith; Jack Maggs, described as a re-imagining of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations; True History of the Kelly Gang, told in fictional letters from the Australian outlaw and folk hero Ned Kelly to his estranged daughter; and My Life as a Fake, a story centred around a literary hoax which was a cause celebre in Australia during the 1940s. Jack Maggs and True History of the Kelly Gang both won the Commonwealth Writers Prize and with True History of the Kelly Gang, Peter Carey won the Booker Prize for Fiction for the second time, in 2001.

He has also written a children's book, The Big Bazoohley and a non-fiction book, 30 Days in Sydney: A Wildly Distorted Account. Wrong about Japan, is a memoir/travelogue of the author's journey through Japan with his son Charley and their attempts to understand the Japanese culture and heritage.

Peter Carey still lives in New York, and teaches Creative Writing at New York University. He has been awarded three honorary degrees and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, the Australian Academy of Humanities and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His latest novels are His Illegal Self; and Parrot and Olivier in America.

Fact file

Name: Peter Carey

Education: Monash University

Date of birth: 1943

Place of birth: Bacchus Marsh, Australia

Current home: New York

Similar authors: Tim Winton, Patrick White, Thomas Keneally