Edition:
Paperback
ISBN:
9780571253326
Published:
03.02.2011
No of pages:
592
Parrot and Olivier in America
Peter Carey
From the two-time Booker Prize-winning author, an improvisation on the life of Alexis de Tocqueville, and an irrepressibly funny portrait of the impossible friendship between a master and a servant.
Olivier is a French aristocrat, the traumatised child of survivors of the Revolution; Parrot the son of an itinerant English printer who always wanted to be an artist but has ended up a servant. Born on different sides of history, their lives will be joined by their travels in America.
When Olivier sets sail for the New World - ostensibly to study its prisons but in reality to save his neck from one more revolution - Parrot is sent with him, as spy, protector, foe and foil. As the narrative shifts between the perspectives of Parrot and Olivier, and their picaresque travels together and apart - in love and politics, prisons and the world of art - Peter Carey explores the adventure of American democracy, in theory and in practice, with dazzling wit and inventiveness.
Tags
Categorised as:
Fiction
Sub-categories:
General Fiction
Places:
America
Genres & Themes:
Discovery;
Friendship;
America;
Democracy;
Picaresque
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