While writing his next novel, The Tax Inspector (1991), Peter Carey moved to New York, and has since written further novels: The Unusual Life of Tristran Smith (1994) Jack Maggs (1997), billed as a re-imagining of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations True History of the Kelly Gang (2001), told in fictional letters from the Australian outlaw and folk hero Ned Kelly to his estranged daughter and My Life as a Fake (2003), a story centred around a literary hoax which gripped Australia in the 1940s. Illywhacker was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1985, and three years later, Oscar and Lucinda won the same prize. Although not a science fiction writer as such, there are some elements of this in his writing, particularly in Illywhacker, which led to this novel receiving the Ditmar Award for Best Australian Science Fiction Novel and being shortlisted for the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel, both in 1986. He then wrote 3 novels: Bliss (1981), about an advertising executive who has an out-of-body experience Illywhacker (1985), a huge vision of Australian history told through the memoirs of a 100-year old confidence man or 'illywhacker' and Oscar and Lucinda (1988), a complex symbolic tale of the arrival of Christianity in Australia. These stories, along with three previously uncollected works, are all included in his Collected Stories (1995). He began by writing surreal short stories, and published two collections, War Crimes (1979), and The Fat Man in History (1980).

Australian identity and historical context play a part in several of his literary works. He studied Science at Monash University, and wrote advertising copy to support himself during the early part of his literary career.

Peter Carey was born in Bacchus Marsh in Victoria, Australia, in 1943.

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