Description

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.

Publisher Review

`Blackly hilarious and structurally audacious' - The Spectator; `A divine satire on the narcissism of the literary world' - The i Paper ; `The most unexpected literary delight of my year' - Irish Independent; `Their Brilliant Careers ... brims with crackerjack wit. Pressure is subtly built; punchlines are explosive' - Australian Book Review; `[Ryan O'Neill] offers a book that is a piss-take, a celebration, a revisionist history and, perhaps most impressively, exceedingly good fun' - The Australian; `A top-to-tail fiction that trades in plausibility...mercilessly funny in places' - Sydney Morning Herald