My Life As A Fake

Description

The first Penguin edition of Peter Carey's My Life as a Fake, with a cover by Michael Leunig In steamy, fetid Kuala Lumpur in 1972, Sarah Wode-Douglass, editor of a London poetry journal, meets the mysterious Christopher Chubb. An Australian literary hoaxer, Chubb is carting around a manuscript likely filled with deceit. In this dubious work Sarah recognises a real genius. But whose genius? She is drawn into a fantastic story of imposture, murder, kidnapping, and exile, which couldn't be true unless its teller were mad. Or perhaps haunted. My Life as a Fake is a Frankenstein story in which what is imagined comes to life and exacts its due. 'Reads like the impossible offspring of a fictional menage-a-trois involving Pale Fire, Lord Jim, and Our Man in Havana.' The Atlantic Monthly 'Dazzles the reader with heady ideas ...then catapults us into madcap action.' The Village Voice 'A charismatically furious piece of work, brilliantly meshing its ethical and artistic debate with a rich human drama.' The Times

Author description

Peter Carey was born in Bacchus Marsh, Victoria, and now lives in New York. He is the author of thirteen novels (including one for children), two volumes of short stories, and two books on travel. Amongst other prizes, Carey has won the Booker Prize twice (for Oscar and Lucinda and True History of the Kelly Gang), the Commonwealth Writers' Prize twice (for Jack Maggs and True History of the Kelly Gang), and the Miles Franklin Literary Award three times (for Bliss, Oscar and Lucinda and Jack Maggs). His most recent novels are Parrot and Olivier in America and The Chemistry of Tears.