Peter Carey (b. 1943) is an author whose novels sweep between the fantastic and the realistic, the comic and the tragic, and the present and the past. Especially since moving to New York, where he teaches creative writing at Princeton and Columbia Universities, the former advertising writer has been impelled to interrogate Australian history, 'the soil that starts with a convict economy, a concentration camp, genocide and all of that. You're the echo of a defeat culture. All my narratives can only end in failure.' He has won three Miles Franklin Awards and four Age Book of the Year Awards. Illywhacker (1985) was nominated for the Booker Prize. He won it with Oscar and Lucinda (1988), once described as 'one of the finest Victorian novels of the twentieth century', and with True History of the Kelly Gang (2000), becoming only the second writer to scoop the honour twice.
