From Booklist: Tristan Smith’s unusual life makes for an unusual novel. Australian Carey, as much acclaimed on his side of the Pacific as on ours, has created not only a complete human being, but also a complete world. Like a science-fiction writer who imagines the structure of an invented place, Carey fashions an entire, and entirely believable, fictitious environment–the archipelago of Efica, now an independent nation, formerly at the colonial mercy of the European powers. Carey’s focus is on the son of a famous actress, who is uncertain about who fathered her offspring. It is this quest–the identity of his father–that is a major part of the impetus behind Tristan’s adventures as he grows up. He was born malformed, and because of the way he looks, he suffers from the moment of his birth. Thus his search for his pater is concomitant to his search for a place in life where he can accept himself and be accepted by others. Alternately funny and poignant, a picaresque novel that avid fiction readers will devour. Brad Hooper
From Publisher’s Weekly: ‘Carey… has outdone himself in this bizarre, uncannily strange dystopia about the life of a dwarf, who narrates the tale…His novel approach to the narrative -t he entire tale is in the form of Tristan’s direct testimony to formal authorities of Voorstand culture – is brilliantly maintained throughout, and the fairy-tale quality of its figuration makes for a surpassingly rich feast of metaphors and mercurial meanings-George Orwell and Lewis Carroll wrapped into one. Publishers Weekly