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The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith
Peter Carey has wholly reimagined the world in The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith. It is vaguely futuristic, underlain with the sediment of a recently ruined past, just post-colonial, culturally monolithic, and although everything seems familiar, nothing is quite recognizable. Our guide here is Tristan Smith himself: a freak of nature, a 'cracked and mended pot' of flesh that hides a 'normal' human being. Tristan is everything one could ask for in a companion and interpretive center of attention - one way or another - wherever he goes, he is sharp-eyed and quick-witted, unsentimental and unforgiving: the perfect witness to the fact and extraordinary effect of his own 'monstrosity.'. Tristan takes us barrelling through his life and times (learning to be invisible and viable, coming of age, losing his mother, searching for his father, transforming himself from something people are afraid even to imagine into something already sanctioned for their imaginations), down a riotously populated, circuitous path that leads, finally, to the Sirkus: the newest entertainment opiate, the inspiration of slavish devotion in audiences, and, perhaps, the source of Tristan's ultimate transformation. The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith is the picaresque made post-modern, a tragicomedy in constant, convulsive motion. It is Peter Carey's most audacious and powerful novel yet.
Book Details
- Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
- Publish Date: Jan 30th, 1996
- Pages: 432
- Language: English
- Edition: undefined - undefined
- Dimensions: 8.08in - 5.30in - 0.94in - 0.77lb
- EAN: 9780679760368
- Categories: • Literary
About the Author
PETER CAREY is the author of thirteen previous novels. In addition to the Booker Prize, his honors include the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the Miles Franklin Literary Award. Born in Australia, he has lived in New York City for more than twenty-five years.
More books by Peter Carey
What people are saying
Praise for this book
"Irresistible...intimate and theatrical...supple and surprising.... We're in the hands of a master storyteller." --Carol Shields, author of The Stone Diaries
"Carey has vaulted to the top ranks of writers in the English-speaking world.... Tristan has an appeal that transcends geography." --Newsday
"Carey's always magical, absolutely lovable narrative voice makes The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith an important contribution to contemporary fiction.... No matter what he decides to write or how he decides to write it, it's a priviledge to read him." --Carolyn See, Washington Post Book World
"Savage and hilarious...dazzling." --The New York Review of Books