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  • Published: 26 October 2009
  • ISBN: 9781742286815
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 480

Parrot and Olivier in America





A dazzling comic masterpiece that reminds us why Peter Carey is Australia's most internationally acclaimed novelist.

Olivier is a French aristocrat, the child of survivors of the revolution. Parrot, the son of an English printer, is a restless servant. When Olivier sets sail for the New World – ostensibly to study its prisons, but in reality to avoid another revolution – Parrot is sent with him, as spy, protector, foe and foil. They are an unlikely pair, but where better for unlikely things to flourish than in the glorious, brand-new democratic experiment, America? And who better than Carey to show what Americans do not always wish to see: that their earliest observers included some who foresaw disastrous consequences for that experiment, well before they became headlines around the world.

  • Published: 26 October 2009
  • ISBN: 9781742286815
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 480

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Awards & recognition

Randwick Award for Literature

Winner  •  2010  •  Best Book

Booker Prize

Shortlisted  •  2010  •  Best Book

Commonwealth Writers' Prize (Regional)

Shortlisted  •  2010  •  Best Book

International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award

Longlisted  •  2010  •  Best Book

Qld Premier's Literary Award

Shortlisted  •  2010  •  Fiction

The Age Book of the Year

Shortlisted  •  2010  •  Fiction

The Miles Franklin Literary Award

Longlisted  •  2010  •  Best Book

Victorian Premier's Literary Award

Shortlisted  •  2010  •  Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction

NSW Premier's Literary Awards

Shortlisted  •  2011  •  Christina Stead Prize for Fiction