My Life As A Fake by Peter Carey (9780143573302)

Description - My Life As A Fake by Peter Carey

An Australian literary hoax lies at the core of My Life as a Fake, Peter Carey's captivating, 'continuously startling' (John Updike) contemplation of the art world.

An Australian literary hoax lies at the core of My Life as a Fake, Peter Carey's captivating, 'continuously startling' (John Updike) contemplation of the art world.

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

'So confidently brilliant, so economical yet lively in its writing, so tightly fitted and continuously startling.' John Updike, The New Yorker

'Fast, furious and fantastical . . Carey is Australia's finest living novelist.' The Guardian

'A wholly absorbing, bizarrely madcap comedy and a telling commentary on the sometimes baffling sources of art . . . Turth, beauty and comedy wrapped in one sprightly package.' Chicago Tribune

'A magnificent, poetic contemplation of the lying, fakery and insincerity inherent in the act of artistic creation.' The Times

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