Outlaws, Fakes and Monsters : Doubleness, Transgression and the Limits of Liminality in Peter Carey's Recent Fiction

Peter Carey is one of the most remarkable writers of our day and age. The characters and narrators that populate his twisted postmodern and postcolonial plot structures are conceived as fakes and tricksters, monstrously distorted creatures and disturbed Antipodeans, struggling for possible meanings of life in the global fringes and beyond. Offering a critical analysis of terms such as liminality and transgression, this comparative study examines the intricate interweaving of faction in 'True History of the Kelly Gang', follows Christopher Chubb into the entanglements between the gnarled tropical trees of Malaysia and the dark recesses of the storyteller's mind in 'My Life as a Fake', and joins the Bones Brothers on their journey to Japan and the US in 'Theft: A Love Story', a book on art, integrity and complicity. Moreover, for the first time in a book-length study, 'His Illegal Self' will be interpreted and placed in the context of ethical criticism and cosmopolitan theory.