Peter Carey, The Tax Inspector

Bruce Woodcock (University of Hull)

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

Dates

First circulation or publication 1991

Places

Australia (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

The Tax Inspector was Carey's first novel written from his new home in America, and his first fiction to be based solely in contemporary setting since Bliss and the short stories. It is a bleak and disturbing vision of a barbarous society. After the spacious panoramas and historical range of Illywhacker and Oscar and Lucinda, Carey restricts himself to almost classical limits of time and place. The tense action is based in the outer suburbs of contemporary Sydney over a period of four days, those being the divisions of the novel (chapters 1-29 Sunday/Monday; 30-45 Tuesday; 46-57 Wednesday; 58-61 Thursday). The pared-down narrative has the dialogic quality of a film-script and fluently interweaves strands of …

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1825 words

Citation: Woodcock, Bruce. "The Tax Inspector". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 08 November 2002 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=7891, accessed 27 November 2024.]

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