Peter Carey, the author of works such as Bliss, the Booker Prize winning Oscar and Lucinda, and the ambitious The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith, is one of the most respected novelists now writing. Bruce Woodcock's study explores all of Carey's writings, from the earliest speculative fictions to his latest book in the most thorough and wide-ranging critique so far on his work. This volume explores Carey's position not only as a great entertainer, but also as a disturbing postcolonial writer and discusses his work in relation to his life and his influences. Woodcock, using previously neglected radio interviews and other documents, sees Carey as a fictional shadow maker whose characters often inhabit the unpredictable borderlands of experience. Commenting on the fabled, surrealist and post-modernist elements, the author also stresses the political concerns of Carey's work and presents him as a hybrid writer who relishes the diversity of his varied imaginings and his own capacity to take risks with his fiction.