Jack Maggs »

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.

A foundling trained in the art of thievery, Jack Maggs was betrayed and deported to Australia for life. But now, having reversed his fortunes, he seeks to fulfill his innermost desire. Returning to London under threat of execution, he's quickly embroiled in various entanglements among a handful of characters — each with their own secrets. And as their various schemes converge, the captivating figure at the epicentre is Maggs himself, at once frightening, mystifying, and utterly compelling.

Christopher Lehmann-Haupt

...The reader is willingly drawn along, charmed by the story's details, susceptible to the plot's contrivances, always surprised by the reversals, misunderstandings, coincidences, exaggerations, interlocking narratives and other entertaining devices of vintage Victorian storytelling. As always, Mr. Carey writes with energy and fantastic inventiveness. But he seems more in control here than he has in any of his previous novels. -- The New York Times