Carey, Peter (Philip)

Carey, Peter (Philip) (1943– ), Australian novelist, born at Bacchus Marsh, Victoria. After leaving university he worked for advertising agencies in Melbourne and London, moving to Sydney in 1974.

Carey's is an idiosyncratic voice, his fiction combining realism and the surreal, satire with a keen sense of the fantastic. Two volumes of short stories, The Fat Man in History (1974) and War Crimes (1979), were followed by a darkly comic novel Bliss (1981), and the exuberantly written Illywhacker (1985), the reminiscences of a 139-year-old conman. His next novel, Oscar and Lucinda (1988, Booker Prize), a rich and subtle love story set in the 19th cent., was followed by The Tax Inspector (1991), and The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith (1994), a picaresque fable set in the imaginary country of Efica. Jack Maggs (1997) is a historical novel with Dickensian resonances, and True History of the Kelly Gang (2001) is a first person narrative of Australia's historic bush-ranger, Ned Kelly, which won Carey the Booker Prize for the second time.