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image of person or book cover 5639662659631863191.jpg
Cover image courtesy of publisher.
y separately published work icon Amnesia single work   novel   thriller  
Issue Details: First known date: 2014... 2014 Amnesia
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

''It was a spring evening in Washington DC; a chilly autumn morning in Melbourne; it was exactly 22.00 Greenwich Mean Time when a worm entered the computerised control systems of hundreds of Australian prisons and released the locks in many places of incarceration, some of which the hacker could not have known existed. Because Australian prison security was, in the year 2010, mostly designed and sold by American corporations the worm immediately infected 117 US federal correctional facilities, 1,700 prisons, and over 3,000 county jails. Wherever it went, it traveled underground, in darkness, like a bushfire burning in the roots of trees. Reaching its destinations it announced itself: THE CORPORATION IS UNDER OUR CONTROL. THE ANGEL DECLARES YOU FREE.'

'Has a young Australian woman declared cyber war on the United States? Or was her Angel Worm intended only to open the prison doors of those unfortunates detained by Australia's harsh immigration policies? Did America suffer collateral damage? Is she innocent? Can she be saved? ' (Publication abstract)

Notes

  • Dedication: For Frances Coady

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • Melbourne, Victoria,: Penguin , 2014 .
      image of person or book cover 5639662659631863191.jpg
      Cover image courtesy of publisher.
      Extent: 384p.
      Note/s:
      • UK Publication: 6 November 2014

        Australian Publication: 14 October 2014

      ISBN: 9781926428604
    • Melbourne, Victoria,: Penguin , 2015 .
      image of person or book cover 6687948810670461749.jpg
      Cover image courtesy of publisher.
      Extent: 384p.
      Note/s:
      • Published : 25 March 2015
      ISBN: 9780143572695
    • New York (City), New York (State),
      c
      United States of America (USA),
      c
      Americas,
      :
      Knopf ,
      2015 .
      image of person or book cover 5856110503260857781.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 320p.
      Note/s:
      • Published 13 January 2015
      ISBN: 9780385352772
    • New York (City), New York (State),
      c
      United States of America (USA),
      c
      Americas,
      :
      Vintage ,
      2015 .
      image of person or book cover 123318080067852725.jpg
      Image courtesy of publisher's website.
      Extent: 384p.
      Note/s:
      • Published 8 December 2015.
      ISBN: 9780804171328
      Series: y separately published work icon Vintage International New York (City) : Vintage , 1993- 19532994 1993 series - publisher novel

      'William Faulkner, Philip Roth, Alice Munro, Thomas Mann, Doris Lessing, Albert Camus, V.S. Naipaul, Gabriel García Márquez, Salman Rushdie, Joan Didion, and Cormac McCarthy, among many others: Vintage International is devoted to publishing the best writing of the past century from the world over. Offering both classic and modern fiction and literary nonfiction in elegant editions, Vintage International aims to provide readers with world-class writing that has stood the test of time and essential works by the preeminent authors of today.'

      Source: Vintage.

    • Melbourne, Victoria,: Penguin , 2020 .
      image of person or book cover 868490304207729316.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 384p.
      Note/s:
      • Published 3rd March 2020
      ISBN: 9781760896416
Alternative title: Le virus de l'amnésie : roman
Language: French
    • Arles,
      c
      France,
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Actes Sud ,
      2016 .
      image of person or book cover 7667809576082190733.jpg
      Image courtesy of publisher's website.
      Extent: 382p.p.
      ISBN: 9782330060497, 2330060491
      Series: y separately published work icon Lettres des Antipodes Arles : Actes Sud , 2013- 13184070 2013 series - publisher

Other Formats

  • Sound recording.
  • Large print.

Works about this Work

Anxieties of Obsolescence and Transformation : Digital Technology in Contemporary Australian Literary Fiction Julian Novitz , 2019 single work criticism
— Appears in: TEXT Special Issue Website Series , October no. 57 2019;

'When addressing the rise of mass media, literary authors of the late twentieth century often expressed an ‘anxiety of obsolescence’ (Fitzpatrick 2006) in their work: an acute awareness of being potentially displaced. This often led them to adopt an attitude of defiance in the face of technological change.

'Many contemporary literary authors adopt a similar oppositional attitude towards the rise and encroachment of networked technology, but retreating to the increasingly peripheral territory of ‘pure’ print-based literature is no longer easy. Digital technology presents not only the possibility of displacement but also that of transformation, with its spread threatening to fundamentally alter the practice of reading and writing.

'Possibly in response to the radical upheavals faced by Australian literary culture due to the rise of electronic publishing since 2012, recent works by three established Australian authors – Amnesia by Peter Carey (2014), the Wisdom Tree novella sequence by Nick Earls (2016), and The Life to Come by Michelle de Kretser (2017) – examine the ways in which networked technologies challenge or complicate the role, identity and practice of the contemporary print-oriented writer. The telling connection is that they present the relationship between print-based writers and networked technology as being transformative rather than simply oppositional, demonstrating the emergence of complex and nuanced responses to the rise of networked technology in Australian literature.' (Publication abstract)

'Shades of the Prison House': Reading Richard Flanagan’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Peter Carey’s Amnesia Martin Staniforth , 2017 single work criticism
— Appears in: Journal of Postcolonial Writing , vol. 53 no. 5 2017; (p. 578-589)

'Australian writers from Marcus Clarke to the present day have used convictism to explore the way in which settler Australians have viewed their past and its influence on contemporary society. Convict fictions have been central to creating and reinforcing these Australians’ sense of their identity and history, and the form of the convict novel has been resistant to attempts to rewrite the traditional narrative of the past. This article argues that the underlying tropes and patterns of the convict novel have also shaped the ways in which other historical fictions have represented the past. It looks in detail at two recent fictions which use the conventions of the convict novel to examine more recent periods of Australian history and suggests that, like the traditional convict novel, their attempts to rewrite the settler narrative have been undermined by a nostalgia for the past which that narrative depicts.' (Abstract)

Utopia and Utopian Studies in Australia Andrew Milner , Verity Burgmann , 2016 single work criticism
— Appears in: Utopian Studies , vol. 27 no. 2 2016; (p. 200-209)
'There are no independently Australian translations of Thomas More’s Utopia. Nor is there any equivalent in Australia to the Society for Utopian Studies in North America or the Utopian Studies Society in Europe. Nor are there any extant formal research groups or undergraduate or graduate courses in utopian studies. There are, however, distinctively Australian traditions of utopian writing, both eutopian and dystopian, and also a limited field of Australian utopian studies, essentially the work of individual scholars. This article attempts a brief description of both.' (Publication summary)
Melbourne, City of Literature Jackie Lamoureux , 2016 single work essay
— Appears in: World Literature Today , March vol. 90 no. 2 2016; (p. 5)
[Review} Amnesia Nataša Kampmark , 2015 single work review
— Appears in: Journal of the European Association for Studies of Australia , vol. 6 no. 1 2015;

— Review of Amnesia Peter Carey , 2014 single work novel

Peter Carey is the master of dramatic, intriguing and far-fetched opening sentences, starting with his first novel Bliss ("Harry Joy was to die three times, but it was his first death which was to have the greatest effect on him"), through to his first short-listed Booker Prize novel Illywhacker ("My name is Herbert Badgery. I am a hundred and thirty-nine years old and something of a celebrity."), and to the second Booker Prize winning True History of the Kelly Gang ("I lost my own father at 12 yr. of age and know what it is to be raised on lies and silences my dear daughter you are presently too young to understand a word I write but this history is for you and will contain no single lie may I burn in Hell if I speak false."), to name but a few. In his thirteenth novel, Carey treats his readers to another arresting beginning in the style of Jarmusch's 1991 Night on Earth: "It was a spring evening in Washington DC; a chilly autumn morning in Melbourne; it was exactly 22.00 Greenwich Mean Time when a worm entered the computerised control systems of countless Australian prisons and released the locks in many other places of incarceration, some of which the hacker could not have known existed" (3). [From the journal's webpage]

Headlong into Recent History Carey's Timely Work Hard to Forget Morag Fraser , 2014 single work review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 11-12 October 2014; (p. 32-33) The Canberra Times , 11 October 2014; (p. 23)

— Review of Amnesia Peter Carey , 2014 single work novel
The Truth? You Want to Pull a Gun on It Geordie Williamson , 2014 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 11-12 October 2014; (p. 16-17)

— Review of Amnesia Peter Carey , 2014 single work novel
For Peter Carey, the Whitlam Dismissal More Than a Memory Conspiring to Create New Hero Susan Wyndham , 2014 single work review
— Appears in: The Age , 21 October 2014; (p. 10) The Sydney Morning Herald , 21 October 2014; (p. 18)

— Review of Amnesia Peter Carey , 2014 single work novel
Twenty-First-Century Blues : A Distinctly New Moment in Peter Carey's Career Patrick Allington , 2014 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , October no. 365 2014; (p. 29-30)

— Review of Amnesia Peter Carey , 2014 single work novel
When the Worm Turns Blanche Clark , 2014 single work review
— Appears in: The Courier-Mail , 1 November 2014; (p. 6-7)

— Review of Amnesia Peter Carey , 2014 single work novel
'It's about cyber conspiracy and it's a rollicking read - Peter Carey's latest novel trawls through the Australian 'blurbs, even revisiting the infamous Battle of Brisbane of 1942...'
Short Term Memory Stephen Romei , 2014 single work column
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 4-5 October 2014; (p. 8-9)
'Australia, and its most famous political moment, remains a wellspring of inspiration for Peter Carey, writes Stephen Romei.'
The Good Life : Lunch with Peter Carey Jason Steger , 2014 single work column
— Appears in: The Age , 22 November 2014; (p. 4)
The Persistence of Memory Jan McGuinness , 2014 single work column
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 6-12 December 2014; (p. 18-19)
'He failed English Literature at Geelong Grammer, but the long-time New York resident became a world-renowned man of letters and has twice won the Booker Proze. Peter Carey's latest novel, Amnesia, provides further evidence he will never forget where he came from. '
Patrick Allington in Conversation with Peter Carey Patrick Allington , 2015 single work interview
— Appears in: Kill Your Darlings , January no. 20 2015; (p. 139-160)
Melbourne, City of Literature Jackie Lamoureux , 2016 single work essay
— Appears in: World Literature Today , March vol. 90 no. 2 2016; (p. 5)
Last amended 20 Oct 2020 08:06:10
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