The first Penguin edition of Peter Carey's My Life as a Fake, with a cover by Michael Leunig In steamy, fetid Kuala Lumpur in 1972, Sarah Wode-Douglass, editor of a London poetry journal, meets the mysterious Christopher Chubb. An Australian literary hoaxer, Chubb is carting around a manuscript likely filled with deceit. In this dubious work Sarah recognises a real genius. But whose genius? She is drawn into a fantastic story of imposture, murder, kidnapping, and exile, which couldn't be true unless its teller were mad. Or perhaps haunted. My Life as a Fake is a Frankenstein story in which what is imagined comes to life and exacts its due. 'Reads like the impossible offspring of a fictional menage-a-trois involving Pale Fire, Lord Jim, and Our Man in Havana.' The Atlantic Monthly 'Dazzles the reader with heady ideas ...then catapults us into madcap action.' The Village Voice 'A charismatically furious piece of work, brilliantly meshing its ethical and artistic debate with a rich human drama.' The Times