Publisher's Synopsis
"The Novel is not dead! Quite simply the best writing of the year; innovative, experimental and most importantly, hilarious. Read this book!" David, Blackwell's Oxford
“Playfulness and wit go a long way toward concealing the seriousness with which O’Neill approaches his craft, but they shouldn’t obscure the depth of his achievements.” - Shannon Burns, Sydney Review of Books
The fantastic lives of sixteen extraordinary Australian writers
WINNER: Australian PM's Award for Fiction
SHORTLISTED: Miles Franklin Literary Award
Absurd, original and highly addictive . . .
In Their Brilliant Careers, Ryan O'Neill has written a hilarious novel in the guise of sixteen biographies of (invented) Australian writers.
Meet Rachel Deverall, who unearthed the secret source of the great literature of our time and paid a terrible price for her discovery. Meet Rand Washington, hugely popular sci-fi author and inveterate racist. Meet Addison Tiller, master of the bush yarn and memorialised as “the Chekhov of Coolabah”, who never travelled outside Sydney.
Their Brilliant Careers is a playful set of stories, linked in many ways, which together form a memorable whole. This unpredictable and intriguing work has echoes of Perec, Borges and Nabokov.
"This book is a sham, a trick, a gorgeous lie. Resting somewhere between a linked short story collection and a Bolanoesque encyclopaedia, Ryan O'Neill has created a book of imaginary literary biography where the invented rub shoulders with the actual, and where the true story is told in the connections and correspondences – some overt, some hidden – between writers of counterfeit note." - Adam Rivett, Sydney Morning Herald
