Flinders University Peter Carey Website by Rebecca Vaughan.
NOTE :This site was created as part of my postgraduate study of Peter Carey's fiction (from Bliss to The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith), and is no longer updated on a regular basis. For more information about Carey's work, including more detail about his later publications, please visit
Peter Carey's own site at http://petercareybooks.com/
Released in 1974 as part of the University of Queensland Press's "Paperback Prose" series, The Fat Man in History was widely acclaimed as one of the most important Australian works of the decade. It is a collection of twelve confronting short stories, examining many aspects of the Australian landscape and people; the stories "Peeling" and "American Dreams", in particular, are vivid and moving interrogations of various kinds of colonialism. On another level, however, the stories in this volume remain simply fantastical tales of seemingly foreign worlds and unlikely situations: ten years after its publication Carey said of this collection, "The trouble with academics is that they try too hard to understand these stories .... They should relax. The stories are only about what they seem to be about. They are, if you like, a collection of 'what if' stories. I took a dozen or so hypotheses and asked what would happen if ...." (Morton-Evans, Michael, "Carey reaches a blissful peak in his literary career", The Australian, 26 July, 1984, p. 8).
War Crimes was released in 1979. It is another collection of haunting short stories, vaguely futuristic and yet simultaneously very familiar.Its publication confirmed Carey as a major new literary talent in Australia. Many reviewers have noted the deadpan tone of narration and "economy of language" (Clunies-Ross, Bruce, Review of War Crimes, Kunapipi, 3:2, 1981, p. 149) in these stories, which belie their fantastic and confronting content. The inspiration for many of these stories came from Carey's time working in advertising, and the most powerful story in the collection is the title piece, War Crimes, a narrative of capitalism at its worst, and of characters who revel in its world of (seemingly) post-apocalyptic industrial madness.
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"Harry Joy was to die three times, but it was his first death which was to have the greatest effect on him, and it is this first death which we shall now witness." Thus begins Carey's first published novel, Bliss, released in 1981. We follow in this text the experiences of Harry Joy, advertising executive and story teller, who survives a heart attack and temporary death, only to come to the conclusion that he is living, literally, in Hell. Explicating Carey's beliefs about industrial and consumer society and the way we treat our environment, the influence of Carey's time in advertising, drawn upon in his previous publication War Crimes, is also evident in this work, particularly in the character of Alex Duval. The twin themes of imprisonment and bewilderment, prominent in both short story collections, are also continued in Bliss. This text was filmed in 1985, directed by Ray Lawrence, with Australian actor Barry Otto playing the lead role of Harry Joy.
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A picaresque masterpiece, Illywhacker takes us on the journey of the life of Herbert Badgery, "a hundred and thirty-nine years old and something of a celebrity". Herbert Badgery, not only the subject but also the narrator of this story, is "a terrible liar", and this metafictional work moves in and out of lies and truth, fact and fiction, examining once again (as did Bliss) the position and function of stories in society. Herbert's story takes us from his nomadic childhood to his novel position in modern day Sydney, and many places in between, driving all the time towards one of the most stunning conclusions of modern fiction. This is a narrative which explores not only Australian history, but the position Australians hold in the world, and their attitudes toward themselves.
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Perhaps Carey's most widely known work, Oscar and Lucinda opens in England in the youth of Oscar Hopkins and follows education as a clergyman and his consequent journey across the world to Australia, and into the outback. On the way to Australia he meets Lucinda, owner of a glass works and defier of conventions; these two characters share a great deal, not the least of which is a mutual obsession with gambling. Incorporating an Aboriginal viewpoint, and a sharp awareness of the "outrage that was committed on these people" (Carey, from Geoffrey Dutton, "Carey and the cringe", The Weekend Australian, 20-21 February, 1988, p. 7), Oscar and Lucinda explores the infancy of white Australia and the harsh realities, racial, sexual and social, of that time. It is both a beautiful and tragic love story, and a searing indictment of colonial practice. The film of Oscar and Lucinda, directed by Gillian Armstrong, is due for release in Australia in December 1997.
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While not as well received as his earlier publications, Carey's 1991 release, The Tax Inspector, remains one of his most incisive works to date. The Tax Inspector drew praise in both Britain and the United States, but the critical response to this text in Australia was disappointingly naive. Exploring the ugliness of modern Australian society, The Tax Inspector an exploration of the plight of the poor and abused, and an indictment of the sharp division between rich and poor in contemporary Sydney. It is also the story of Benny, who wants to turn himself into an angel. Highly psychological and leading once again to a stunning conclusion, the style of the writing displays an inheritance from the short story collections in its calm other-worldliness. Nevertheless, this text is devastatingly realistic.
Returning once more to his constant concern with colonialism, The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith (1994) is an allegorical account of the relationship between two fictional countries. Voorstand, a huge northern hemisphere land mass with a strong, if slowly decaying, popular culture, slyly but effectively dominates, both militarily and culturally, the smaller and scattered southern dominions of Efica, "a country so unimportant that you are already confusing the name with Ithaca or Africa" (p. 5). Carey gives us these two countries completely, and the text is replete with their histories, mythologies, languages and legends. Incorporating many elements of the grotesque, including the marvellous invention of the Voorstandish "Sirkus", this work is an amazing allegory of colonialism, a picaresque account of the life of Tristan Smith, severely damaged at birth but determined to make his mark on the cultural map of his country.
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Released in 1997, Jack Maggs in some ways recalls Oscar and Lucinda, as it marks a return to a more realist narrative style. This work holds a special relationship with Charles Dickens' Great Expectations, telling a similar story from what might be termed the Australian point of view, as Maggs, a convict returned to London from New South Wales in search of the "son" whom he has made wealthy. It is a lyrically beautiful book, effectively invoking the streets, society and voices of Dickensian London.This is a work in which Carey maintains his concerns about the practice and devastating effects, both personal and national, of colonialism. Carey is currently working on the screenplay of this text.
Last updated on Tuesday 11th November 1997.
NOTE :This site was created as part of my postgraduate study of Peter Carey's fiction (from Bliss to The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith), and is no longer updated on a regular basis. For more information about Carey's work, including more detail about his later publications, please visit
Peter Carey's own site at http://petercareybooks.com/
