Bliss

( 2 )

All Available Formats + Editions

——

$12.99

NOOK Book

——

$12.99

Bliss (eBook) Pub. Date: 7/6/2011 Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
$0.01

$16.36

Paperback

$3.04

$16.36

Bliss (Reprint) Pub. Date: 1/28/1996 Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

$0.01

——

Bliss Pub. Date: 7/28/1986 Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

$0.38

——

Bliss Pub. Date: 4/1/1986 Publisher: Faber and Faber

$52.50

——

Bliss: The Screenplay Pub. Date: 6/1/1985 Publisher: University of Queensland Press

$0.30

——

Bliss Pub. Date: Publisher: University of Queensland Press
$2.17

——

Hardcover

$2.17

——

Bliss Pub. Date: 4/1/1982 Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

Customers Who Bought This Also Bought

Advertising

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780679767190
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date: 1/28/1996
Edition description: Reprint
Edition number: 1
Pages: 304
Sales rank: 543,264
Series: Vintage International Series
Product dimensions: 5.29 (w) x 8.01 (h) x 0.66 (d)

Meet the Author

Peter Carey

One of our most acclaimed authors, two-time Booker Prize winner Peter Carey’s novels temper feats of imagination and language with a solid grounding in history and literature. Through his novels, many of which re-imagine the peopling and history of his native Australia, Carey has garnered renown as a novelist who can write about important subjects in a voice both readable and distinctly challenging.

Biography

"My fictional project has always been the invention or discovery of my own country," the prizewinning Australian author Peter Carey has said. This postcolonial undertaking has sometimes led Carey to wrestle with the great works of English literature: The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith (1994) draws on Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy, while in Jack Maggs (1997), a version of Dickens's Great Expectations, is told from the perspective of the convict who returns to England from Australia.

But although Carey went to what he calls "a particularly posh" Australian boarding school, he claims he didn't discover literature until he was out of school. He studied chemistry at Monash University for just a year before leaving to work in advertising. There, surrounded by readers and would-be writers, he discovered the great literature of the 20th century, including authors like Joyce, Faulkner and Beckett. "To read Faulkner for the first time was for me like discovering another planet," Carey said in an interview with The Guardian. "The pleasure of that language, the politics of giving voice to the voiceless."

Publishers rejected Carey's first three novels, so he began writing short stories. These, he later said, "felt like the first authentic things I had done." He was still working for an advertising agency when his first collection of short stories appeared in 1973, and he kept the part-time job after moving to an "alternative community" in Queensland. His first published novel, Bliss (1981), won a prestigious Australian literary prize, the Miles Franklin Award. The book is about an advertising executive who has a near-death experience and ends up living in a rural commune.

Carey's later novels ranged farther outside the bounds of his own experience, but he continued to develop his concern with Australian identity. 1988's Oscar and Lucinda, which tells the story of a colonial Australian heiress and her ill-fated love for an English clergyman, won the Booker Prize and helped establish Carey as one of the literary heavyweights of his generation. He won another Booker Prize for True History of the Kelly Gang (2000), the story of a notorious 19th-century outlaw whose legacy still shapes Australia's consciousness.

Though Carey now lives and teaches in New York City, his home country and its past still possess his imagination. ''History,'' he writes, ''is like a bloodstain that keeps on showing on the wall no matter how many new owners take possession, no matter how many times we paint over it.''

Good To Know

Peter Carey and J. M. Coetzee are the only two-time Booker Prize winners to date.

Carey caused a stir in the British press when he declined an invitation to meet Queen Elizabeth II. The royal invitation is extended to all winners of the Commonwealth Writers Prize, which Carey received in 1998 for Jack Maggs. He did meet the Queen after he won the award a second time, for True History of the Kelly Gang in 2001.

Fans of Carey's work know that in 1997, Oscar and Lucinda was made into a critically acclaimed movie starring Ralph Fiennes and Cate Blanchett. But they may not know that Carey wrote the screenplay for the critically panned Wim Wenders film Until the End of the World (1991) as well as the screenplay adaptation of his own novel, Bliss (1991).

1. Also Known As:
  
  Peter Philip Carey
1. Date of Birth:
  
  May 7, 1943
2. Place of Birth:
  
  Bacchus Marsh, Victoria, Australia
1. Education:
  
  Monash University (no degree)
2. Website:
  
  http://www.petercareybooks.com

Customer Reviews

Average Rating 3.5

( 2 )

Rating Distribution

5 Star

(1)

4 Star

(0)

3 Star

(0)

2 Star

(1)

1 Star

(0)

Your Rating:

Review Guidelines

Tell the world what you think of this product.

Add Recommendations

Your Name: Create a Pen Name or Leave Anonymously

Barnes & Noble.com Review Rules

Our reader reviews allow you to share your comments on titles you liked, or didn't, with others. By submitting an online review, you are representing to Barnes & Noble.com that all information contained in your review is original and accurate in all respects, and that the submission of such content by you and the posting of such content by Barnes & Noble.com does not and will not violate the rights of any third party. Please follow the rules below to help ensure that your review can be posted.

Reviews by Our Customers Under the Age of 13

We highly value and respect everyone's opinion concerning the titles we offer. However, we cannot allow persons under the age of 13 to have accounts at BN.com or to post customer reviews. Please see our Terms of Use for more details.

What to exclude from your review:

Please do not write about reviews, commentary, or information posted on the product page. If you see any errors in the information on the product page, please send us an email.

Reviews should not contain any of the following:

- HTML tags, profanity, obscenities, vulgarities, or comments that defame anyone
- Time-sensitive information such as tour dates, signings, lectures, etc.
- Single-word reviews. Other people will read your review to discover why you liked or didn't like the title. Be descriptive.
- Comments focusing on the author or that may ruin the ending for others
- Phone numbers, addresses, URLs
- Pricing and availability information or alternative ordering information
- Advertisements or commercial solicitation

Reminder:

- By submitting a review, you grant to Barnes & Noble.com and its sublicensees the royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable right and license to use the review in accordance with the Barnes & Noble.com Terms of Use.
- Barnes & Noble.com reserves the right not to post any review -- particularly those that do not follow the terms and conditions of these Rules. Barnes & Noble.com also reserves the right to remove any review at any time without notice.
- See Terms of Use for other conditions and disclaimers.

Anonymous

Posted February 9, 2004

Should be entitled Blah

I struggled getting through the final twenty pages of this. Carey attempts to justify Harry's conversion from advertising snake to tree-hugging lover by writing about how unlikely the transformation is, yet it happens anyway. Extremely flat writing with a plot that fizzles mid-book.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.
Anonymous

Posted April 3, 2001

The first work by a great author.

Bliss is exactly that. An intoxicating story that foretells Carey's incredible eye for detail, continual ability to shock and surprise, wicked humor, and profound insight. The story of a man who dies on the first page for nine minutes. He is revived only to decide that he has died after all, and is now in a hell that very closely resembles his life. Only he is now aware of peculiar differences which are remarkably disturbing (don't think _Jacob's_Ladder_). As Harry Joy procedes through Hell (don't think Dante, either), he becomes more and more cognizant of the true nature of things. If you've read other Carey (most notably Oscar and Lucinda), you will be surprised by the upbeat nature of the book. This is not one that descends into a nightmare, but rather rises out of one.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

If you find inappropriate content, please report it to Barnes & Noble