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Peter Carey: The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith

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Peter Carey The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith

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From a writer whom Thomas Keneally calls "one of the great figures on the cusp of the millennium" comes a novel that conjures an entire world that suggests our own, but tilted on its axis — a world whose most powerful country, Voorstand, dominates its neighbors with ruthless espionage and its mesmerizing but soul-destroying Sirkus. Into that world comes Tristan Smith, a malformed, heroically willful, and unforgivingly observant child. Tristan's life includes adventure and loss, political intrigue, and a bizarre stardom in the Voorstand Sirkus, where animals talk and human performers die real deaths. The result is a visionary picaresque, staggering in its inventions, spellbinding in its suspense, and unabashedly moving.

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Peter Carey


The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith

Acclaim for PETER CAREY’s

The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith “A prickly futurist fantasy … gaudy … extravagant.” — Los Angeles Times “Carey’s work has a wild, chance-taking quality … in harmony with the spirit of this age. If he keeps on … he will prove to be one of its finest novelists.” — Chicago Tribune “His books have an odd, tangential beauty, an airy poise — Hogarth by way of Chagall…. Carey’s fund of stories seems so inexhaustible that he should seriously think of making charitable donations to the needy…. His need to fall head over heels for each and every one of his characters is one of his greatest strengths as a novelist.” — The New Yorker “A rich, wry and funny novel of perseverance over physical, societal and family deformities.” — Boston Globe “Captivating [and] evocative … a compelling story…. Most accomplished.” — Miami Herald “Carey’s most inventive book yet — surpassing even The Tax Inspector and the Booker Prize-winning Oscar and Lucinda…. The book is like a fantastical, action-packed dream — you just don’t want it to end.” — Details “Given Peter Carey’s bubbling imagination and intoxicating language, any new novel from the Australian author is an event…. A cross between John Irving’s A Son of the Circus and Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent…. This novel is a cleverly detailed imagining of a possible future.” — San Francisco Chronicle

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Kenneth de Kok who guided me through the shoals of Dutch and Afrikaans, translated some of my dialogue, and provided me with the name Voorstand; Charles Poulbon of Perth, Western Australia, who first alerted me to the joys of pigeon racing; Ronni Burrows of Ronni Reports for her highly efficient research on a number of arcane subjects; and Dr Brian Waldron who read a very early draft and was therefore Tristan Smith’s first diagnostician.

I owe especial thanks to Alison Summers, my wife, whose careful reading and thoughtful questions helped me to discover, chart and report the emotional and geographical territories of this novel.

The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith

For Alison, Sam and Charley

BOOK 1. My Life in Efica

~ ~ ~

Фото


Republic of Efica

‘In foreign countries,’ Bruder Mouse said, ‘they put animals in cages and keep them locked up and kill them.’

‘You can’t frighten me,’ said Bruder Duck. ‘There’s a great world out there and I plan to see it. I’m going to fairs, and puppet shows, and I’m going to cross oceans and have all sorts of adventures.’

‘You want to be fat and rich,’ said Bruder Mouse. ‘You want to find gold.’

‘It’s true,’ said Bruder Duck, ‘that if I chanced to stumble over a nugget I would thank the Lord for my good fortune and if I found an object of value I might buy cheaply, I would not refuse the blessing.’

‘But what of the issue?’ said Bruder Mouse.

‘What issue?’ said the Duck, who was busy eating the cheese pudding again.

‘That they have Sirkuses in foreign countries, where they put God’s creatures in cages. They have butcher shops where they sell our Bruders’ flesh.’

‘If what you say is so,’ said the Bruder Duck, ‘then I would change their minds.’

‘How would you do this?’ asked the Mouse.

‘I would do doody and fall over,’ said the Duck. ‘I would make them laugh.’

From Bruder Duck’s Travels, Badberg Edition

~ ~ ~

The Dog, the Duck, the Mouse

The Dog, the Duck, the Mouse


They lived their life in a tent


The Duck played the fiddle


The Dog had a piddle


The Mouse ran off with the rent.

Oh God we laughed till we cried


We sighed and wiped our eyes


We kissed the Dog we cuddled the Mouse


With the Duck right by our side.

The Dog, the Duck, the Mouse


Came in braces and baggy pants


They were no moles


But they purchased the holes


We had been left by chance.

Oh God we laughed till we cried


We sighed and wiped our eyes


We kissed the Dog we cuddled the Mouse


With the Duck right by our side.



Efican folk song

circa

351

EC

(Source:

Doggerel and Jetsam: unheard voices in the Voorstand Imperium

, Inchsmith Press, London)

1


My name is Tristan Smith. I was born in Chemin Rouge in Efica — which is to say as much to you, I bet, as if I declared I was from the moon.

And yet if you are going to make much sense of me, you have to know a little of my country, a country so unimportant that you are already confusing the name with Ithaca or Africa, a name so unmemorable it could only have been born of a committee, although it remains, nonetheless, the home of nearly three million of the earth’s people, and they, like you, have no small opinion of themselves, have artists and poets who are pleased to criticize its shortcomings and celebrate its charms, who return home to the eighteen little islands between the tropic of Capricorn and the 30th parallel, convinced that their windswept coastline is the most beautiful on earth. Like 98 per cent of the planet’s population, we Eficans may be justly accused of being provincial, parochial, and these qualities are sometimes magnified by your habit of hearing ‘Ithaca’ when we say ‘Efica’.

If I say ‘Voorstand’ to you, that is a different story entirely. You are a citizen of Voorstand. You hold the red passport with the phases of the moon embossed in gold. You stand with your hand over your heart when the Great Song is played, you daily watch new images of your armies in the vids and zines. How can I make you know what it is like to be from Efica — abandoned, self-doubting, yet so wilful that if you visit Chemin Rouge tomorrow morning we will tell you that the year is 426* and you must write your cheques accordingly.

If you were my students I would direct you to read Efica: from penal colony to welfare state,†The Caves of Democracy,‡ and Volume 3 of Wilbur’s The Dyer’s Cauldron.* But you are not my students and I have no choice but to juggle and tap-dance before you, begging you please sit in your seats while I have you understand exactly why my heart is breaking.

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