My Life as a Fake

An Australian literary hoax lies at the core of My Life as a Fake, Peter Carey’s captivating, ‘continuously startling’ (John Updike) contemplation of the art world.

In steamy, fetid Kuala Lumpur in 1972, Sarah Wode-Douglass, editor of a London poetry journal, meets the mysterious Christopher Chubb. An Australian literary hoaxer, Chubb is carting around a manuscript likely filled with deceit. In this dubious work Sarah recognises a real genius. But whose genius? She is drawn into a fantastic story of imposture, murder, kidnapping, and exile, which couldn’t be true unless its teller were mad. Or perhaps haunted. My Life as a Fake is a Frankenstein story in which what is imagined comes to life and exacts its due.