Description

In Australian slang, an illywhacker is an unprincipled vendor of faux diamonds, just a nation reasonable con-man and questionable tonics. And Herbert Badgery, the 139-year-old narrator of Peter Careyis uproarious book, will be the master of all of them. Vagabond and charlatan, aviator and vehicle salesperson, seducer and patriarch, Badgery is just a walking embodiment of the Foreign national character—espcially of its proclivity for high tales and barefaced lies.As Carey uses this wonderful scoundrel across a region and a hundred years, he produces a crazy cover of extravagant activities, with characters offering a genteel dowager who fends off chaos with a power buckle and a ravishing young woman with a dangerous fondness for roof trysts. Strongly creative, irresistibly unusual, Illywhacker is further evidence that Peter Carey is among the many charming writers at the office in just about any hemisphere.