PublishedPenguin, January 2011 |
ISBN9780143203520 |
Format, 468 pages |
Dimensions19.7cm × 13.2cm × 3.3cm |
A new edition of Peter Carey's Booker Prize-shortlisted Parrot and Olivier in America, with a cover by Michael Leunig 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.