The first Penguin edition of Peter Carey's Booker Prize-winning Oscar and Lucinda, with a cover by Michael Leunig Oscar Hopkins, the hydrophobic, noisy-kneed son of a preacher, renounces his father's stern religion in favour of the Anglican Church. Lucinda Leplastrier, a frizzy-haired heiress, impulsively buys a glass factory with the inheritance forced on her by a well-intentioned adviser. When the two finally meet, on board a ship to New South Wales, they are bound by their affinity for gambling and risk, their loneliness, and their awkwardly blossoming mutual affection. Love will prove to be their ultimate gamble. 'Very, very hard to put down ...Like the characters of Charles Dickens and Honore de Balzac, Mr Carey's creations are real in the simplest human sense.' Washington Times 'Genius is a devalued, overworked word, but make no mistake about it, in that department Peter Carey has been richly blessed.' Punch 'It fills me with wild, savage envy, and no novelist could say fairer than that.' Angela Carter, The Guardian

Author Biography

Peter Carey is a zoologist who has made more than 80 trips to Antarctica, including research expeditions with the New Zealand Antarctic Programme and the Australian National Antarctic research expedition. He has also worked as a lecturer and expedition leader on many Antarctic cruise ships. Peter has conducted research on penguin behaviour, sea-bird ecology, fish physiology and the social behaviour of seals. He visits Antarctica every summer and is working to ecologically restore a group of small islands in the Falklands Archipelago. As director of the conservation organisation SAFER (Subantarctic Foundation for Ecosystems Research), he is actively involved in improving the wildlife habitat of these islands. http-//www.awapress.com/authors-Peter-Carey