"Illywhacker is such an astonishing novel, of such major proportions, that before saying anything else one must record gratitude for its existence." – Geoffrey Dutton, Bulletin "The finest and funniest picaresque novel yet written in Australia" – Peter Pierce National Times "A great tottering tower of a novel which stands up astonishingly against all the odds." – Victoria Glendinning, London Sunday Times "It is impossible to convey in a review the cumulative brilliance and accelerating hilarity of the prose." – Nicholas Spice, London Review of Books "Awesome breadth, ambition and downright narrative joy…Illywhacker is a triumph." – Curt Suplee, Washington Post "A sprawling, inventive and deeply absorbing saga…It is also one of the funniest, most vividly depicted, most entertainingly devious and bitterly insightful pieces of fiction to be published in recent years." – Alida Becker Newsday Carey can spin a yarn with the best of them… Illywhacker is a big, garrulous, funny novel… If you haven't been to Australia, read Illywhacker. It will give you the feel of it like nothing else I know." – The New York Times Book ReviewIn Australian slang, an illywhacker is a country fair con man, an unprincipled seller of fake diamonds and dubious tonics. And Herbert Badgery, the 139-year-old narrator of Peter Carey's uproarious novel, may be the king of them all. Vagabond and charlatan, aviator and car salesman, seducer and patriarch, Badgery is a walking embodiment of the Australian national character – especially of its proclivity for tall stories and barefaced lies.As Carey follows this charming scoundrel across a continent and a century, he creates a crazy quilt of outlandish encounters, with characters that include a genteel dowager who fends off madness with an electric belt and a ravishing young girl with a dangerous fondness for rooftop trysts. Boldly inventive, irresistibly odd, Illywhacker is further proof that Peter Carey is one of the most enchanting writers at work in any hemisphere."A book of awesome breadth, ambition, and downright narrative joy… Illywhacker is a triumph." – Washington Post Book World