30 Days In Sydney: A Wildly Distorted Account

An Australia native returns to Sydney after 17 years and examines the urban landscape as both a tourist and a prodigal son. Carey structures his account around Earth, Air, Fire, and Water, looking both inward into his past and outward onto the city's familiar landmarks and surroundings, achieving just the right alchemy of the elements to tell Sydney's story.

"This is a fabulously idiosyncratic small masterpiece ... it's so good it takes your breath away.""--Times" (UK)

After living abroad for years, novelist Peter Carey returns home to Sydney and attempts to capture its character. Seeking the help of his old friends, Carey is soon drawn into their strange, anarchic worlds, each one orbiting the place he has come back to see. The result is a wild and wonderful journey of discovery and rediscovery as bracing as the southerly bluster that sometimes batters Sydney's shores. Famous sights such as Bondi Beach, the Opera House, the Harbour Bridge and the Blue Mountains all take on a strange new intensity when exposed to the penetrating gaze of the author and his friends.

"30 Days in Sydney" offers the reader an enchanting glimpse behind the facades and the Venetian blinds of the city.