He is at work on a new novel.Carey's 1837 London, where most of the novel is set, is a brilliant Dickens pastiche, all 'sulphurous Corruption', glare and crowd and filth and dark corners, its buildings bursting with a violent life of their own. Since then he has published five novels: My Life as a Fake, Theft, His Illegal Self, The Chemistry of Tears, and Parrot and Olivier in America (which was a finalist for both the U.S National Book Award and the Man Booker Prize.) In 2003 he joined Hunter College as the Director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing. 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.

He claims his birthplace of Bacchus Marsh had a population of 4,000.

Peter Carey was born in Australia in 1943.

Jack maggs by peter carey