Synopses & Reviews
Peter Carey captures our imagination with a brilliant and unexpected portrait of Sydney.
Bloomsbury is pleased to announce the second title in the phenomenally well-received Writer in the City series-in which some of the world's finest novelists reveal the secrets of the city they know best. In the midst of the 2000 Olympic games, Australia native Peter Carey returns to Sydney after a seventeen-year absence. Examining the urban landscape as both a tourist and a prodigal son, Carey structures his account around the four elements-Earth, Air, Fire, and Water-insisting on the primacy of nature to this unique Australian cityscape.
As his quixotic account unfolds, Carey looks both inward into his past (as well as Sydney's own violent history) and outward onto the city's familiar landmarks and surroundings-the Opera House, the Harbour Bridge, the Blue Mountains-achieving just the right alchemy of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water to tell Sydney's extraordinary story.
Review
"This is a fabulously idiosyncratic small masterpiece ... its so good it takes your breath away." —Times of London (UK)
"This is a hymn of praise to Sydneyand to its people. A little book, but an incredibly rich one." —Scotland on Sunday (UK)
"It is a vintage performance. He makes you want to get on the next Qantas flight out of Heathrow." —Evening Standard (UK)
"The writer in him gets truly hooked, and so does the reader … a book of fierce color and shape." —New York Times
Synopsis
An Australia native returns to Sydney after 17 years and examines the urban landscape as both a tourist and a prodigal son. Carey structures his account around Earth, Air, Fire, and Water, looking both inward into his past and outward onto the city's familiar landmarks and surroundings, achieving just the right alchemy of the elements to tell Sydney's story.
Synopsis
“This is a fabulously idiosyncratic small masterpiece ... its so good it takes your breath away.”—Times (UK)
After living abroad for years, novelist Peter Carey returns home to Sydney and attempts to capture its character. Seeking the help of his old friends, Carey is soon drawn into their strange, anarchic worlds, each one orbiting the place he has come back to see. The result is a wild and wonderful journey of discovery and rediscovery as bracing as the southerly bluster that sometimes batters Sydneys shores. Famous sights 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 the author and his friends.
30 Days in Sydney offers the reader an enchanting glimpse behind the facades and the Venetian blinds of the city.
About the Author
Peter Carey received the Booker Prize for Oscar and Lucinda and again for True History of the Kelly Gang. His other awards include the Commonwealth Writers Prize and the Miles Franklin Literary Award. His most recent novel His Illegal Self was published in 2008. Born in Australia in 1943, he now lives in New York, where he is the director of the Hunter College MFA program in creative writing.