Peter Carey, Illywhacker

Ryan Webb (University of East Anglia)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 9.1.1: Australian Writing and Culture.
Vol. editors: Susan Kossew (Monash University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1985

Places

Australia (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

Illywhacker, Peter Carey’s second published novel, is a work of startling narrative scope and ambition. Like Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, published four years earlier, its approach seems to be heavily influenced by Günter Grass’s The Tin Drum in that it distils decades of national history – in Carey’s case, Australian national history – into the life story of a central character and his family. Unlike these other two novels, however, Illywhacker is neither specifically political or directly allegorical; its depiction of Australian national identity is often murky, being tied up in a number of ambiguous and self-contradictory leitmotifs woven into the meandering first-person narrative …

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4823 words

Citation: Webb, Ryan. "Illywhacker". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 08 September 2004 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=4539, accessed 26 November 2024.]

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