Peter Carey, Booker Prize-winning author of Oscar and Lucinda, powerfully evokes the legend of nineteenth-century Australian outlaw Ned Kelly in this novel narrated in defiantly descriptive prose by the barely literate bushranger himself. To his pursuers, Kelly is nothing but a monstrous criminal, a thief and a murderer. To his own people, the lowly class of ordinary Australians, he is a hero, defying the authority of the English to direct their lives. Indentured by his bootlegger mother to a famous horse thief (who was also her lover), Ned sees his first prison cell at fifteen and by the age of twenty-six has become the most wanted man in the wild colony of Victoria, taking over whole towns and defying the law until he is finally captured and hanged. Here is a classic outlaw tale, made alive by the skill of a great novelist.
After living in New York for ten years novelist Peter Carey returned home to Sydney with the idea of capturing its ebullient character via the four elements. ''I would never seek to define Manhattan by asking my New York friends for stories of Earth and Air and Fire and Water,'' he writes, ''but that is exactly what was in my mind as I walked through immigration at Kingsford Smith International Airport.'' But Carey''s friends turn out to be anarchic characters each of whom has had his own very individual ways of story-telling. Carey draws the reader helplessly into a wild and wonderful journey of discovery and re-discovery. Reading this book is a very physical experience, as bracing as the famous Southerly buster that sometimes batters Sydney''s beauteous shores. Famous visual extravaganzas such as Bondi Beach, the Opera House, the Harbour Bridge and the Blue Mountains all take on a strange new intensity when exposed to the penetrating gaze of Peter and his friends. "Thirty Days In Sydney" offers the reader a private glimpse behind the glittering facades and the venetian blinds. It will exhilarate and enchant all who visit.
En un alarde asombroso del arte del ventrílocuo, Peter Carey da al mítico bandolero australiano Ned Kelly una voz tan original y llena de pasión que parece que el mismísimo Kelly nos hable desde la ultratumba.La verdadera historia de la banda de Kelly, arraigada en lo mas hondo de Australia, es un canto de protesta escrito en una voz que es al mismo tiempo ruda y delicada, violenta y conmovedora. Carey da vida al Ned Kelly huerfano, Edipo, ladron de caballos, granjero, reformista, asaltador de bancos, asesino de tres policias, y finalmente, el Robin Hood de Australia.
El protagonista de esta historia, ambientada en las brumosas calles londinenses de 1837, es un experto en las artes del robo que fue deportado a Australia después de sufrir una cruel traición. Ahora ha vuelto a Inglaterra, asumiendo un gran riesgo. ¿Que busca despues de todos estos años? Jack Maggs es un extraño y seductor relato de engaños y artimañas, una historia de persecucion, intriga y lucha por el poder.
In seinem Roman lässt Peter Cary den 1855 geborenen australischen Outlaw Ned Kelly selber zu Wort kommen: Er ist zwölf, als sein Vater verschwindet, mit vierzehn kommt er zum ersten Mal mit dem Gesetz in Konflikt. Dann geht seine Karriere steil bergan, Pferdediebstahl, Sabotage der Gleisarbeiten, Banküberfälle, Schießereien mit der Polizei. Er ist großzügig zu den Armen, neigt er bei seinen Überfällen zu Maskerade und Farce. Doch unter der Verkleidung hat eine weiche Stelle - für seine Mutter, deren wechselnde Liebhaber er hasst, für seine Tochter, an die er seinen Lebensbericht in 13 Lieferungen richtet. Am Ende sitzt seine Gang in der Falle: er flieht und kehrt in seiner eisernen Rüstung zurück, um sich dem Gemetzel entgegenzustemmen, vergebens ...
Based on a famous hoax perpetrated in Australia in 1943, Peter Carey explores imagination and its relation to fact in this novel about a woman named Sarah Wode-Douglass, editor of The Modern Review, who travels to Kuala Lumpur. There she finds Christopher Chubb, who tells her an amazing story: he passed off his own poems as works by a brilliant but nonexistent poet named Bob McCorkle. When the hoax was uncovered, Chubb was ruined--and McCorkle became real and sought revenge on his creator. A New York Times Notable Book for 2003.
En un alarde asombroso del arte del ventrílocuo, Carey da vida al mítico bandolero australiano Ned Kelly, al huérfano, Edipo, ladrón de caballos, granjero, asaltador de bancos, asesino de tres policías y, finalmente, el Robin Hood de Australia, en una voz tan original y llena de pasion que parece que el mismisimo Kelly noshable desde la ultratumba.
Sarah Wode-Douglas is an aristocratic Englishwoman who makes her living in the cloistered world of literary London until she impulsively follows a family friend, poet John Slater, to Kuala Lumpur. Temporarily abandoned, she encounters another poet, the strange and forgotten Christopher Chubb.
