From short stories Peter Carey has proceeded to long novels. This is his third. It is dense with incident and meticulously delineated characters who drop in and out of the narrative, always with a purpose. In some ways it is as surreal as Bliss, in others as naturalistic as Illywacker. But it is like neither of these novels. It cannot be said to be ‘better’ than either, if this mode of comparison can be used legitimately in a literary sense.

What can be said is that it is a marvellous piece of story-telling, which doesn’t stop there. Its theme explores and exploits and to some extent explains a time – around the 19th century half way mark – which bears an extraordinary resemblance to our own.