A bright star overseas dims in his homeland

Sydney Morning Herald - September 11, 2010

The global popularity of Aust Lit's most famous son has not been reflected in Australia, writes Catherine Keenan.

Until this week, the most talked-about Australian author in the running for this year's Man Booker Prize was Christos Tsiolkas. His book The Slap was one of the most divisive ever to make the longlist, either a riot of misogyny or a riveting contemporary portrait. There was delight and despondency in equal measure when it failed to make the six-strong shortlist.

Talk has now turned to Peter Carey, the Australian who did make the shortlist, and could carry off a historic third win. He and J. M. Coetzee are the only people to have won the Booker twice. Carey won for Oscar and Lucinda in 1988 and for True History of the Kelly Gang in 2001. He was also shortlisted in 1985 for Illywhacker.

He is not the favourite to win this year - Tom McCarthy's C and Emma Donoghue's Room are more widely tipped - but if Parrot and Olivier in America does make it over the line, Carey will become the Booker's favourite son.

Literary prizes are fickle affairs, and the £50,000 Booker is among the glitziest and most mercurial of all. Carey is streets ahead of any other Australian in its own, sometimes unfathomable terms. Leaving aside Coetzee (a South African who lives in Adelaide) and DBC Pierre (who was born here but left as a child), Tom Keneally is the only other Australian to have won it, for Schindler's Ark in 1982.

Tim Winton has been shortlisted twice, for Dirt Music and The Riders; David Malouf and Kate Grenville have been shortlisted once each, for Remembering Babylon and The Secret River respectively. Others have made longlists and shortlists, including Patrick White, who was posthumously shortlisted for the Lost Man Booker for The Vivisector.
The full story at SMH.