“Illywhacker is such an astonishing novel, of such major proportions, that before saying anything else, one must record gratitude for its existence.”
—Geoffrey Dutton, The Bulletin
“The funniest novel of the year.”
—The Times (London)
“A book of awesome breadth, ambition, and downright narrative joy…. Illywhacker is a triumph.”
—Washington Post Book World
“A great tottering tower of a novel which stands up astonishingly against all the odds.”
—Sunday Times
“The finest and funniest picaresque novel yet written in Australia.”
—National Times (Australia)
“A sprawling, inventive and deeply absorbing saga … It is also one of the funniest, most vividly depicted, most entertainingly devious and bitterly insightful pieces of fiction to be published in recent years.”
—Newsday
“Illywhacker is a tour de force, both funny and moving, the work of an original at full stretch.”
—Financial Times (London)
“A vast bubbling stew of a novel, featuring a trickster hero-narrator, by one of Australia’s outstanding writers.”
—The Observer (London)
“Carey can spin a yarn with the best of them…. Illywhacker is a big, garrulous, funny novel…. If you haven’t been to Australia, read Illywhacker. It will give you the feel of it like nothing else I know.”
—Howard Jacobson, The New York Times Book Review
“It is impossible to convey in a review the cumulative brilliance and accelerating hilarity of the prose.”
—London Review of Books
“A spectacular achievement… Establishing without doubt Peter Carey as one of the most exciting prose writers in Australia today.”
—Books and Bookmen