Amnesia - Hardcover
From the two-time Booker Prize winner: a masterful, exceedingly timely new novel--at once dark, suspenseful and seriously funny--that takes us on a journey to the place where the cyber underworld of radicals and hackers collides with international power politics.
When an internet virus throws open the gates at thousands of American prisons, the hacker turns out to be an unlikely young Australian woman. Has she declared cyber war on the United States or was her "Angel Worm" intended only to free the victims of Australia's immigration policies? Is she innocent? Can she be saved? The answers are up to journalist Felix Moore, a.k.a. Felix Moore-or-less-correct. His career is tanking when he gets this chance to write a biography that will vindicate the young woman. Funding is to be provided by an old friend--an outrageous millionaire property developer--and further impetus by an old flame: the young woman's actress mother whom Felix worshipped when they were at university together. And it will be our great good fortune to see the world through Felix's comic, cowardly, angry, yet fundamentally humane eyes as he attempts to save the young woman--and redeem himself in the bargain.
When an internet virus throws open the gates at thousands of American prisons, the hacker turns out to be an unlikely young Australian woman. Has she declared cyber war on the United States or was her "Angel Worm" intended only to free the victims of Australia's immigration policies? Is she innocent? Can she be saved? The answers are up to journalist Felix Moore, a.k.a. Felix Moore-or-less-correct. His career is tanking when he gets this chance to write a biography that will vindicate the young woman. Funding is to be provided by an old friend--an outrageous millionaire property developer--and further impetus by an old flame: the young woman's actress mother whom Felix worshipped when they were at university together. And it will be our great good fortune to see the world through Felix's comic, cowardly, angry, yet fundamentally humane eyes as he attempts to save the young woman--and redeem himself in the bargain.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author:
PETER CAREY is the author of 12 previous novels and has twice received the Booker Prize. His other honours include the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the Miles Franklin Literary Award. Born in Australia, he has lived in New York City for 20 years.
Review:
“You can pick any page at random and locate an energy that never seems to flag. . . . [P]layfully somersaulting sentences. . . . [H]is pages will always yield their pleasures. Their angry energy stays with you.” —Lawrence Osborne, The New York Times
“The way the author and narrator (largely Felix) conspire to capture the characters in words is one of the book’s chief delights.” —St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“Nestled inside this brisk cyber caper is an aesthetically daring character study. The story is narrated initially by an embattled left-wing journalist who has been promised exclusive access to a young woman accused of hacking into Australia’s prison system and freeing inmates across the country. While the book begins as a thriller—the journalist maintains an uncertain alliance with a beautiful actress and contends with the historical consequences of American meddling in international affairs—it later shifts registers and perceptively recounts the formative years of the hacker. Carey imbues her immersion in the world of coding and the Internet with a palpable, engrossing sense of joy and discovery.” —The New Yorker
“Peter Carey’s fiction is turbo-charged, hyperenergetic. His language has little time for quiet passages; his minor characters, even at their most incidental, are endowed with details of appearance and speech that belie their status; his narrative lines, when they run into difficulties of any kind, blast through them by introducing new inventions and new possibilities. This is what makes him Dickensian. . . . Carey’s book is whirling and intricate, yet such is the excitement of the writing, we take the ride very gladly. . . . Like many of Carey’s books, Amnesia generates an aura of the fantastical but is completely grounded; it is high-spirited but serious, hectic but never hasty. . . . [A] deeply engaging book. It responds to some of the biggest issues of our time, and reminds us that no other contemporary novelist is better able to mix farce with ferocity, or to better effect.” —Andrew Motion, The Guardian
“[This] lively thirteenth novel from the Australian magus Peter Carey will leave the mind reeling. It is tremendous fun, a satiric burlesque as fast as a speeding car, barbed as only Carey can be, seething with benign rage and as black as reality. . . . The narrative energy of Amnesia is impressive, as are [Carey's] brilliant handling of the many voices and his always fluent prose. . . . Amnesia contains some of the sharpest characterisation Carey has written. . . . Carey has always been a clever, entertaining writer. . . . Amnesia is blunt and funny, brave and outspoken. . . . Carey says a great deal in an entertaining, provocative novel, weighty with polemical intent, yet he never forgets to tell a story that is as large as life and as exuberantly complicated, and, as regards setting the record straight, long overdue. If fiction can summon the now, this novel has.” —Eileen Battersby, The Irish Times
“Amnesia is far more than the sum of its intricate moving parts.” —Maclean’s
“[A] meticulously rendered forty years of US-Australia relations and domestic Australian politics. . . . [V]isionary, fiercely smart, and illuminating, and timely. . . . In some ways this is a kind of political thriller, but of a highly intelligent kind. In other ways it’s political history, and a novel of place, and a salute to idealism. It’s also a reminder about the US’ dark role in world affairs, and about corporate-sponsored environmental destruction. In a literal and figurative way, it’s testimony. In all ways, Amnesia is hard to forget.” —The Buffalo News
“Fantastically brilliant, gripping and astonishing . . . I couldn’t believe I was so completely caught by the throat by a story about malware and cyberspace and sabotage. . . . [I]t’s also about a whole dark stain of political history, about a mother and daughter, about power and brutality, about being young and furious, and above all, about the bloody strenuous painful work of writing a life from mixed testimonies, putting a life together, under the worst possible conditions—I thought Felix Moore in all his humanness, messiness and determination, was a masterpiece.” —Hermione Lee, author of Penelope Fitzgerald
“A dystopian political thriller . . . exquisite . . . [with a] debt to everyone from Faulkner to Kerouac to Bob Dylan [and] from Graham Greene and John le Carré. . . . [Carey] rushes in, tests boundaries, takes risks, relying all the while on cantankerous charm and his innate dexterity as a prose writer. . . . It is the ferocious forward motion that impresses most.” —Geordie Williamson, The Australian
“Amnesia is at once a bold account of Australia’s uncomfortable and slippery relationship with the United States and an ambitious meditation on the writer’s uncomfortable and slippery relationship with facts and their audience. . . . A terrific book.” —James Kidd, The Independent
“[A] rollicking good time. . . . Carey is a master craftsman with wry humor. . . . [T]aut and well-crafted to the end. If it isn’t another Booker Prize winner, it is still a work with the power to vibrate after we’ve closed the covers.” —The Plain Dealer
“Australian two-time Booker winner’s best work.” —Vulture
“Amnesia is a rollicking tour de force.” —Steven G. Kellman, The Boston Globe
“A completely original political novel.” —Mark Lawson, The Guardian
“Bracing and abrasive new novel. . . . It is slippery and compelling, written with the vivid precision that marks Mr Carey’s best work. It appears at first as though he might, like Thomas Pynchon in Bleeding Edge or Dave Eggers in The Circle, be attempting to recreate the constantly shifting virtual world in the fixed text of a novel. But humanity, not machinery, lies at the book’s heart. . . . Mr. Carey, who has already won the Man Booker Prize twice, for Oscar and Lucinda (1988) and True History of the Kelly Gang (2001)—should be in with a chance for a third prize next year.” —The Economist
“The way the author and narrator (largely Felix) conspire to capture the characters in words is one of the book’s chief delights.” —St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“Nestled inside this brisk cyber caper is an aesthetically daring character study. The story is narrated initially by an embattled left-wing journalist who has been promised exclusive access to a young woman accused of hacking into Australia’s prison system and freeing inmates across the country. While the book begins as a thriller—the journalist maintains an uncertain alliance with a beautiful actress and contends with the historical consequences of American meddling in international affairs—it later shifts registers and perceptively recounts the formative years of the hacker. Carey imbues her immersion in the world of coding and the Internet with a palpable, engrossing sense of joy and discovery.” —The New Yorker
“Peter Carey’s fiction is turbo-charged, hyperenergetic. His language has little time for quiet passages; his minor characters, even at their most incidental, are endowed with details of appearance and speech that belie their status; his narrative lines, when they run into difficulties of any kind, blast through them by introducing new inventions and new possibilities. This is what makes him Dickensian. . . . Carey’s book is whirling and intricate, yet such is the excitement of the writing, we take the ride very gladly. . . . Like many of Carey’s books, Amnesia generates an aura of the fantastical but is completely grounded; it is high-spirited but serious, hectic but never hasty. . . . [A] deeply engaging book. It responds to some of the biggest issues of our time, and reminds us that no other contemporary novelist is better able to mix farce with ferocity, or to better effect.” —Andrew Motion, The Guardian
“[This] lively thirteenth novel from the Australian magus Peter Carey will leave the mind reeling. It is tremendous fun, a satiric burlesque as fast as a speeding car, barbed as only Carey can be, seething with benign rage and as black as reality. . . . The narrative energy of Amnesia is impressive, as are [Carey's] brilliant handling of the many voices and his always fluent prose. . . . Amnesia contains some of the sharpest characterisation Carey has written. . . . Carey has always been a clever, entertaining writer. . . . Amnesia is blunt and funny, brave and outspoken. . . . Carey says a great deal in an entertaining, provocative novel, weighty with polemical intent, yet he never forgets to tell a story that is as large as life and as exuberantly complicated, and, as regards setting the record straight, long overdue. If fiction can summon the now, this novel has.” —Eileen Battersby, The Irish Times
“Amnesia is far more than the sum of its intricate moving parts.” —Maclean’s
“[A] meticulously rendered forty years of US-Australia relations and domestic Australian politics. . . . [V]isionary, fiercely smart, and illuminating, and timely. . . . In some ways this is a kind of political thriller, but of a highly intelligent kind. In other ways it’s political history, and a novel of place, and a salute to idealism. It’s also a reminder about the US’ dark role in world affairs, and about corporate-sponsored environmental destruction. In a literal and figurative way, it’s testimony. In all ways, Amnesia is hard to forget.” —The Buffalo News
“Fantastically brilliant, gripping and astonishing . . . I couldn’t believe I was so completely caught by the throat by a story about malware and cyberspace and sabotage. . . . [I]t’s also about a whole dark stain of political history, about a mother and daughter, about power and brutality, about being young and furious, and above all, about the bloody strenuous painful work of writing a life from mixed testimonies, putting a life together, under the worst possible conditions—I thought Felix Moore in all his humanness, messiness and determination, was a masterpiece.” —Hermione Lee, author of Penelope Fitzgerald
“A dystopian political thriller . . . exquisite . . . [with a] debt to everyone from Faulkner to Kerouac to Bob Dylan [and] from Graham Greene and John le Carré. . . . [Carey] rushes in, tests boundaries, takes risks, relying all the while on cantankerous charm and his innate dexterity as a prose writer. . . . It is the ferocious forward motion that impresses most.” —Geordie Williamson, The Australian
“Amnesia is at once a bold account of Australia’s uncomfortable and slippery relationship with the United States and an ambitious meditation on the writer’s uncomfortable and slippery relationship with facts and their audience. . . . A terrific book.” —James Kidd, The Independent
“[A] rollicking good time. . . . Carey is a master craftsman with wry humor. . . . [T]aut and well-crafted to the end. If it isn’t another Booker Prize winner, it is still a work with the power to vibrate after we’ve closed the covers.” —The Plain Dealer
“Australian two-time Booker winner’s best work.” —Vulture
“Amnesia is a rollicking tour de force.” —Steven G. Kellman, The Boston Globe
“A completely original political novel.” —Mark Lawson, The Guardian
“Bracing and abrasive new novel. . . . It is slippery and compelling, written with the vivid precision that marks Mr Carey’s best work. It appears at first as though he might, like Thomas Pynchon in Bleeding Edge or Dave Eggers in The Circle, be attempting to recreate the constantly shifting virtual world in the fixed text of a novel. But humanity, not machinery, lies at the book’s heart. . . . Mr. Carey, who has already won the Man Booker Prize twice, for Oscar and Lucinda (1988) and True History of the Kelly Gang (2001)—should be in with a chance for a third prize next year.” —The Economist
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- PublisherRandom House Canada
- Publication date2015
- ISBN 10 0345814886
- ISBN 13 9780345814883
- BindingHardcover
- Edition number1
- Number of pages320
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