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y separately published work icon The Tax Inspector single work   novel  
Issue Details: First known date: 1991... 1991 The Tax Inspector
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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)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • London,
      c
      England,
      c
      c
      United Kingdom (UK),
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Faber ,
      1991 .
      image of person or book cover 5183561883639751343.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 279p.
      ISBN: 0571162975
    • New York (City), New York (State),
      c
      United States of America (USA),
      c
      Americas,
      :
      Knopf ,
      1992 .
      image of person or book cover 787680424426836117.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 279p.
      Edition info: 1st American trade ed.
      ISBN: 0679404341
    • Toronto, Ontario,
      c
      Canada,
      c
      Americas,
      :
      Vintage Canada ,
      1993 .
      image of person or book cover 7184496047202165073.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 279p.
      ISBN: 0394222733
    • New York (City), New York (State),
      c
      United States of America (USA),
      c
      Americas,
      :
      Vintage ,
      1993 .
      image of person or book cover 481944406094412770.jpg
      Image courtesy of publisher's website.
      Extent: 1v.p.
      Note/s:
      • Published 4 January 1993.
      ISBN: 9780679735984
      Series: y separately published work icon Vintage International New York (City) : Vintage , 1993- 19532994 1993 series - publisher novel

      'William Faulkner, Philip Roth, Alice Munro, Thomas Mann, Doris Lessing, Albert Camus, V.S. Naipaul, Gabriel García Márquez, Salman Rushdie, Joan Didion, and Cormac McCarthy, among many others: Vintage International is devoted to publishing the best writing of the past century from the world over. Offering both classic and modern fiction and literary nonfiction in elegant editions, Vintage International aims to provide readers with world-class writing that has stood the test of time and essential works by the preeminent authors of today.'

      Source: Vintage.

    • London,
      c
      England,
      c
      c
      United Kingdom (UK),
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Faber ,
      2004 .
      image of person or book cover 5000515471206073615.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 279p.
      ISBN: 0571166326 (pbk)
    • Melbourne, Victoria,: Penguin , 2015 .
      image of person or book cover 7650539723502558478.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 384p.
      Note/s:
      • Published 22 April 2015
      ISBN: 9780143571223
    • Melbourne, Victoria,: Penguin , 2020 .
      image of person or book cover 8394673310691534141.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 384p.
      Note/s:
      • Published 3rd March 2020
      ISBN: 9781760896492
Alternative title: De belastinginspectrice
Language: Dutch
    • Amsterdam,
      c
      Netherlands,
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Amber ,
      1992 .
      image of person or book cover 371954200097349782.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 297p.
      ISBN: 9050931634

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  • Sound recording.
  • Sound recording.

Works about this Work

The Prosaic and the Phantasmagoric : Urban Bodies in Peter Carey’s The Tax Inspector Lydia Saleh-Rofail , 2018 single work criticism
— Appears in: Portable Prose : The Novel and the Everyday 2018; (p. 77-90)

Lydia Saleh Rofail's essay 'apprehends literary depictions of filth in urban as well as suburban topographies. The Tax Inspec-tor is a novel about thwarted aspirations and the domestic traps of the every-day. Quotidian objects can include bodies as well as urban and suburban spaces and structures of meaning within everyday cultural spaces. They are defined as prosaic counterpoints to phantasmagoric and imaginative objects. This essay analyzes contrasts between desolate outer suburbs that frame opulent cities and the everyday dysfunctional lives haunted by historical trauma. Saleh Rofail reads these objects "As metonyms for Australian identity with their uneasy interplay of imaginary and prosaic." This everyday with its attendant seemingly unrelated objects and domestic spaces, traces not only the complex, psychologically traumatized inner working of the characters, but also symbolizes the contradictions at the heart of modern Australian identity. This identity is conflicted, constrained and expansive, at once prosaic and imaginary, parochial and global.' (Introduction xiv-xv)

Taking Suburbia Seriously Nathanael O'Reilly , 2012 single work criticism
— Appears in: Exploring Suburbia: The Suburbs in the Contemporary Australian Novel 2012; (p. 249-301)
Aboriginal Gothic Katrin Althans , 2010 single work criticism
— Appears in: Darkness Subverted : Aboriginal Gothic in Black Australian Literature and Film 2010; (p. 11-29)
In this essay, Althans ‘treats the Gothic as being a mode which continues to endow genres with a certain set of menacing stock elements and unstable characteristics of which the interrogation of boundaries, binaries, and identity are particularly useful in an Aboriginal Australian context’. (p.11-12)
Wrong About Carey? : Reading Carey in Post-Postmodern Times Andreas Gaile , 2010 single work criticism
— Appears in: Rewriting History : Peter Carey's Fictional Biography of Australia 2010; (p. 285-298)
'Decolonizing the Mind' (I) : Colonial Australia Andreas Gaile , 2010 single work criticism
— Appears in: Rewriting History : Peter Carey's Fictional Biography of Australia 2010; (p. 151-191)
'All of Peter Carey's novels as well as many of the short stories, I shall argue, engage in a decolonizing programme. If one were to read all of Carey's books in one sitting, one of the mandates of postcolonialism, namely to 'decolonize the mind' (phrase coined by Ngugi wa Thiont'o), would emerge as one of the writer's primary concerns...The stories Carey tells provide evidence of three successive generations of colonial overlords in Australia: the British Empire in colonial times; the United states, which took over cultural and economic overlordship after the British Empire collapsed; and multinational trusts (with moneyed interests from Japan and the United States) in what is technically speaking a postcolonial, but in reality a neo-colonial country. Spanning roughly one and a half centuries of Australian history, Carey's oeuvre thus gives a diachronical overview of the experience of a colonized culture.' (p 151)
[Review] Jack Maggs Melissa Bellanta , 2003 single work review
— Appears in: JAS Review of Books , April no. 14 2003;

— Review of Jack Maggs Peter Carey , 1997 single work novel ; The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith Peter Carey , 1994 single work novel ; Oscar and Lucinda Peter Carey , 1988 single work novel ; Illywhacker Peter Carey , 1985 single work novel ; The Tax Inspector Peter Carey , 1991 single work novel ; Collected Stories Peter Carey , 1994 selected work short story
Untitled Margot Luke , 1992 single work review
— Appears in: Fremantle Arts Review , April/May vol. 7 no. 4 & 5 1992; (p. 9-10)

— Review of The Tax Inspector Peter Carey , 1991 single work novel
Taxing Time from Carey Nicholas Mansfield , 1992 single work review
— Appears in: The CRNLE Reviews Journal , no. 1 1992; (p. 76-78)

— Review of The Tax Inspector Peter Carey , 1991 single work novel
[Review] Wintering Chris Floyd , 1992 single work review
— Appears in: Span , May no. 33 1992; (p. 177-181)

— Review of Homecoming : Three Novellas John Clanchy , 1989 selected work short story ; Wintering Victor Kelleher , 1990 single work novel ; Cabin Fever Elizabeth Jolley , 1990 single work novel ; The Tax Inspector Peter Carey , 1991 single work novel
A Stumble, No More Peter Pierce , 1991 single work review
— Appears in: The Bulletin , 13 August vol. 113 no. 5782 1991; (p. 112)

— Review of The Tax Inspector Peter Carey , 1991 single work novel
Cross References : Allusions to Christian Tradition in Peter Carey's Fiction Christer Larsson , 2005 single work criticism
— Appears in: Fabulating Beauty : Perspectives on the Fiction of Peter Carey 2005; (p. 53-70)
As allusions to Christian tradition are a recurrent and prominent feature in Carey's work, the author of this article discusses them with regard to their function as thematic feature and as narrational devices or formal feature. Larsson's careful reading shows that several of Carey's novels are 'more firmly rooted in the Christian tradition than the author's self-conception as "an atheist" and the postcolonial condemnation of totalizing, essentialist narratives would lead one to believe' (Introduction to Fabulating Beauty xxx).
Rejecting and Perpetuating the Anti-Suburban Tradition : Representations of the Suburbs in The Tax Inspector, Johnno and Cloudstreet Nathanael O'Reilly , 2006 single work criticism
— Appears in: Antipodes , June vol. 20 no. 1 2006; (p. 20-25)
Peter Carey's Novels : Critique or Ironic Celebration of Consumer Society Shahram R. Sistani , 2006 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Commonwealth Review , vol. 18 no. 2 2006; (p. 169-182)
'This paper investigates the ways in which Peter Carey manifests the corrupt attractiveness of contemporary consumer societies. ... His novels are satires on the comprehensive dreams and visions of twentieth-century corporate capitalism. In Carey's writing we deal with the notion of cultural imperialism. ... Carey's fiction can be considered a critique and at the same time an ironic celebration of consumer hysteria.' (169-170)
The Angels Are Not Coming Xavier Pons , 2009 single work criticism
— Appears in: Messengers of Eros : Representations of Sex in Australian Writing 2009; (p. 245-269)
Strategies of an Illywhacker (II) : Transcending Historical Reality Andreas Gaile , 2010 single work criticism
— Appears in: Rewriting History : Peter Carey's Fictional Biography of Australia 2010; (p. 59-82)
'Over the past twenty years Peter Carey has made it sufficiently clear that for lack of a fail-safe way of determining the one true history attempts at representing a past reality must necessarily falter or end in a philosophical impasse. Realism as a literary device has been a constant in Carey's writings, though. As a mode of narration, it simulates the truth, or at least creates a semblance of truth and probability and suggests to the reader that the narrated events could actually have happened this way in the extratextual world.' (p. 59)
Last amended 29 Aug 2022 15:50:10
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