Who is Peter Carey?
Peter Carey is an Australian novelist, born in Bacchus Marsh, Victoria, in 1943. He is one of only a few writers to win the Booker Prize twice, for Oscar and Lucinda and True History of the Kelly Gang.
Carey worked in advertising in Melbourne and Sydney before becoming a full-time writer. His early short stories, collected in The Fat Man in History, were known for their strange and imaginative style.
Oscar and Lucinda, published in 1988 and winning the Booker that year, tells the story of two gamblers who plan to carry a glass church across New South Wales. It was made into a film starring Ralph Fiennes and Cate Blanchett.
Ned Kelly
True History of the Kelly Gang, published in 2000, is written as if by bushranger Ned Kelly himself to his daughter, in a rough, unpunctuated voice. It won the Booker Prize in 2001.
Carey has also won the Miles Franklin Award three times, for Bliss, Oscar and Lucinda and Jack Maggs, a reimagining of a character from Charles Dickens's Great Expectations.
He moved to New York in 1990, where he taught creative writing, while continuing to write mostly about Australia. A film of True History of the Kelly Gang, directed by Justin Kurzel, was released in 2019.
Did You Know?
Carey's novel Bliss was made into a 1985 film, and a character in it gave singer Vance Joy his stage name.