Plon Plon i(A67645 works by) (Organisation) assertion
Born: Established: Paris,
c
France,
c
Western Europe, Europe, ;
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

Works By

Preview all
16 61 y separately published work icon My Life as a Fake Peter Carey , Milsons Point : Random House Australia , 2003 Z1045776 2003 single work novel (taught in 8 units) Sarah Wode-Douglas is an aristocratic woman who has made her living as the editor of the poetry magazine "First Proof", until she impulsively follows a friend to Kuala Lumpur. She meets Christopher Chubb, an enigmatic wreck of a man whose terrible secrets Sarah is compelled to discover and pursue. (Source: Trove)
31 192 y separately published work icon True History of the Kelly Gang Peter Carey , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2000 Z668312 2000 single work novel historical fiction (taught in 29 units)

'"I lost my own father at 12 yr. of age and know what it is to be raised on lies and silences my dear daughter you are presently too young to understand a word I write but this history is for you and will contain no single lie may I burn in Hell if I speak false."

'In TRUE HISTORY OF THE KELLY GANG, the legendary Ned Kelly speaks for himself, scribbling his narrative on errant scraps of paper in semi-literate but magically descriptive prose as he flees from the police. 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, the bushranger 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 saw his first prison cell at 15 and by the age of 26 had become the most wanted man in the wild colony of Victoria, taking over whole towns and defying the law until he was finally captured and hanged. Here is a classic outlaw tale, made alive by the skill of a great novelist.' (From the publisher's website.)
3 71 y separately published work icon The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith Peter Carey , Toronto : Random House Canada , 1994 Z508427 1994 single work novel (taught in 2 units) 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. (Source: Trove)
15 114 y separately published work icon Jack Maggs Peter Carey , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1997 Z205857 1997 single work novel (taught in 8 units) The year is 1837 and a stranger is prowling London. He is Jack Maggs, an illegal returnee from the prison island of Australia. He has the demeanor of a savage and the skills of a hardened criminal, and he is risking his life on seeking vengeance and reconciliation.
Influenced by Charles Dickens's Great Expectations.
5 27 y separately published work icon The Rose Crossing Nicholas Jose , London Ringwood : Hamish Hamilton , 1994 Z271076 1994 single work novel historical fiction A 17th Century English horticulturist and his daughter are shipwrecked on a desert island, where they meet a deposed pretender to the Chinese throne and his elderly advisor, lost while sailing to Rome to seek the Pope's help. While the young romance, the old haggle, European navigation savvy in exchange for a rare Chinese rose.
6 130 y separately published work icon Illywhacker Peter Carey , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1985 Z359598 1985 single work novel (taught in 2 units) In Australian slang, an illywhacker is a country fair con man, an unprincipled seller of fake diamonds and dubious tonics. And Herbert Badgery, may be the king of them all. Vagabond and charlatan, aviator and car salesman, seducer and patriarch, Badgery is a walking embodiment of the Australian national character. (Source: Trove)
9 94 y separately published work icon The Tax Inspector Peter Carey , London : Faber , 1991 Z195169 1991 single work novel (taught in 1 units) Counter From Granny Catchprice, who runs her family business--and her family--with senility, cunning, and a handbag full of explosives to sixteen-year-old Benny, who dreams of transforming a failing automobile franchise into an empire--and himself into an angel--the Catchprices may be the most spectacularly contentious family since Dostoevsky's Karamozovs. But when a beautiful and very pregnant agent of the Australian Taxation Office enters their lives, the resulting collision becomes, in Carey's hands, masterpiece of coal-black humour and compassionate horror. (Source: Library of Congress Catalogue)
27 170 y separately published work icon Oscar and Lucinda Peter Carey , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1988 Z359704 1988 single work novel (taught in 7 units)

'Oscar Hopkins is an Oxford seminarian with a passion for gambling. Lucinda Leplastrier is a Sydney heiress with a fascination for glass. The year is 1864. When they meet on the boat to Australia their lives will be forever changed ...'

(Source: Publisher's website)
15 19 y separately published work icon The Tower of Babel Morris West , London : Heinemann , 1968 Z529289 1968 single work novel
9 3 y separately published work icon Cooper's Creek Cooper's Creek : Tragedy and Adventure in the Australian Outback; Cooper's Creek : The Real Story of Burke and Wills Alan Moorehead , London : Hamish Hamilton , 1963 Z995999 1963 single work prose 'In 1860, an expedition set out from Melbourne, Australia, into the interior of the country, with the mission to find a route to the northern coast. Headed by Robert O'Hara Burke and William John Wills, the party of adventurers, scientists, and camels set out into the outback hoping to find enough water and to keep adequate food stores for their trek into the bush. Almost one year later, Burke, Wills, and two others from their party, Gray and King, reached the northern shore but on their journey back, they were stranded at Cooper's Creek where all but King perished. Cooper's Creek is a gripping, intense historical narrative about the harshness of the Australian outback and the people who were brave enough to go into the very depths of that uncharted country.' (Publisher's blurb)
19 33 y separately published work icon The Shoes of the Fisherman Morris West , London : Heinemann , 1963 Z529081 1963 single work novel

'The profound story of a cardinal who steps out from the Iron Curtain to become Pope amid the machinations of Cold War politics—the first title in the Vatican Trilogy.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (Allen & Unwin, 2017).
8 1 y separately published work icon Kundu : A Novel Morris West , New York (City) : Dell , 1956 Z528050 1956 single work novel

'In a valley deep in the highlands of New Guinea lives a small colony of Europeans. One of them is Kurt Sonderfield, a doctor with a shady past who will stop at nothing to get what he wants.

N'Daria is a hauntingly beautiful native girl whom Sonderfield has trained in the art of seduction. Kumo is a young sorcerer who has fallen under Sonderfield's sway. Only two dare oppose Sonderfield: the old French missionary Pere Louis, and Gerda, the wife Sonderfield has betrayed.

'As the passions and power plays of the Europeans collide with ancient highland magic, the beat of the kundu drums thunders through the valley, bringing the story to an explosive climax.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (Allen & Unwin, 2017).
8 20 y separately published work icon Careful, He Might Hear You Sumner Locke Elliott , London : Gollancz , 1963 Z256618 1963 single work novel (taught in 2 units)
— Appears in: Reader's Digest Condensed Books : Volume One, 1964, Winter Selections 1963;

'It’s the Great Depression. Six-year-old PS is an orphan. He lives in Sydney with his Aunt Lila. But all that is about to change. Now his Aunt Vanessa has decided to take proper care of him.

'Careful, He Might Hear You is one of the most extraordinary portraits of childhood in Australian fiction.' (Publication summary : Text Classics)
7 2 y separately published work icon Children of the Sun Morris West , London : Heinemann , 1957 Z528149 1957 single work non-fiction

'Though eight years old, his body is so small, his face so pinched, you would take him for five or six.

'Antonino is an abandoned child struggling for survival in the dark alleys of Naples. He is one of thousands whose waking hours are spent in petty crime and whose bed is a street grating above a bakers oven.

'Yet there is hope, in the shape of a young priest, Mario Borrelli. In a journey of self-transformation and love, Father Borrelli befriends the street children and sets up a support network for them: The House of the Urchins.

'Morris West spent time in the slums of impoverished postwar Naples. His chilling account of the local street urchins in his international bestseller Children of the Sun drew the world's attention to their plight, and offers a timeless insight into child poverty. West's portrayal of Father Borelli has inspired many others to follow in Borelli's footsteps.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (Allen & Unwin, 2017).
14 12 y separately published work icon Daughter of Silence Morris West , 1961 London : Heinemann , 1961 Z528871 1961 single work novel crime

'At high noon on a hot summers day, a beautiful young woman shoots the mayor dead.

'So begins a story of passion and betrayal in a Quiet Tuscan village, leading to a sensational trial. The defence team, headed by the brilliant but unhappy Carlo Rienzi, uncovers a sinister conspiracy of silence that threatens to split the community.

'Can Carlo persuade the judge to grant clemency in what appears to be an open-and-shut case? Can the law intervene in the brutal tradition of vendetta?'

Source: Publisher's blurb (Allen & Unwin, 2017).
6 y separately published work icon McCreary Moves In Michael East , London : Heinemann , 1958 Z528466 1958 single work novel

'Mick McCreary is an oilman out of a job. His only possessions are a plane ticket to Singapore, a month's pay in Indonesian rupiahs and the luck of the Irish.

'When the mysterious Mr Rubensohn approaches him with the offer of a breathtaking salary for a drilling operation on a remote island—no questions asked—he thinks that luck is running with him once more.

'But then he meets the beautiful Lisette, and within twenty-four hours he is involved in murder, intrigue and an international fraud of frightening proportions.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (Allen & Unwin, 2017).
13 1 y separately published work icon The Big Story Morris West , London Melbourne : Heinemann , 1957 Z528257 1957 single work novel

'Richard Ashley is a journalist who cares about the truth, and he's about to break the greatest story of his career.

'Italy's ruling clique is rotten to the core. A scandal centred around Vittorio, Duke of Orgagna, points to a web of corruption and deceit emanating from his estate in the south.

'But Ashley finds that the truth is not all it seems when he falls in love with Orgagna's wife. Everything is more complicated, more passionate, than before—and tainted by death. Suddenly Ashley's greatest story threatens to be his last.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (Allen & Unwin, 2017).
13 5 y separately published work icon The Backlash Morris West , London : Heinemann , 1958 Z528362 1958 single work novel

'Winter 1945. The Second World War is over, but it is a time of armistice, not peace. Austria is grieving its defeat and the loss of a generation of men; it is a land without leaders. To men like Major Mark Hanlon, Occupation Commander of the alpine town of Bad Quellenberg, falls the task of destroying the legacy of the Nazis once and for all.

'When his driver is murdered by an Austrian soldier, Hanlon is determined to bring the man to justice. But investigating the crime proves difficult in a community where nearly everyone has something to hide.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (Allen & Unwin, 2017).
9 y separately published work icon The Naked Country Michael East , London : Heinemann , 1960 Z528770 1960 single work novel

'Lance Dillon is owner of a new cattle station on the southern fringe of Australia's Arnhem Land. When an Aboriginal hunting party targets Dillon's prize bull for a ritual killing, and then spears Dillon in the shoulder, it's clear they want him of their traditional land.

'Under the merciless rays of the burning sun, the wounded Dillon flees into the bush, with expert tracker Mundaru in hot pursuit.

'Dillon's city-born wife Mary and handsome local policeman Neil Adams set out to search for her husband. The gruelling journey throws them together, and it is not long before each is secretly hoping that Dillon is never found alive.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (Allen & Unwin, 2017).
30 20 y separately published work icon The Devil's Advocate Morris West , 1959 London : Heinemann , 1959 Z528667 1959 single work novel
— Appears in: Reader's Digest Condensed Books: volume four, 1960, Autumn selections 1960;

'A moving exploration of the meaning of faith, and a vivid portrayal of life in impoverished post-war Calabria.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (Allen & Unwin, 2017).
X