Their Brilliant Careers

A breathtakingly clever comic novel about the Australian literary scene; winner of the Australian PM's prize for fiction

The fantastic lives of sixteen extraordinary Australian writers WINNER: Australian PM’s Award for Fiction SHORTLISTED: Miles Franklin Literary Award Absurd, original and highly addictive, Their Brilliant Careers is a hilarious novel in the guise of sixteen biographies of (invented) Australian writers. Subjects include Rachel Deverall, who unearthed the secret source of the great literature of our time and paid a terrible price for her discovery; Rand Washington, hugely popular sci-fi author, body-builder and inveterate racist; and Addison Tiller, whose stories set in the outback were bestsellers even though he had never actually travelled outside Sydney. And let’s not forget experimental writer Arthur ruhtrA, who wrote a whole novel without once using the letter C. Every page – from the dedication to the index – is fraudulent, each biography interweaving with the rest to form a magnificent lie. The result is a sparklingly inventive award-winning novel.