Author

Publication

2010 - Faber & Faber

Language

English

Word Count

112,750 words, Guess

Page Count

451 pages

Physical Format

Paperback

Identifiers

and 4 more
  • Better World BooksKQ-487-978
  • Better World Books9780571253302
  • Better World BooksKO-700-486
  • Open LibraryOL27677699M

Classifications

  • LCCPR9619.3.C36 P37 2010
  • LCCPR9619.3.C36

Description

"From the two time Booker Prize-winning author, an improvisation on the life of Alexis de Tocqueville, and an irrepressibly funny portrait of the impossible friendship between a master and a servant. Olivier is a French aristocrat, the traumatised child of survivors of the Revolution; Parrot the son of an itinerant English printer who always wanted to be an artist but has ended up a servant. Born on different sides of history, their lives will be joined by their travels in America. When Olivier sets sail for the New World - ostensibly to study its prisons but in reality to save his neck from one more revolution - Parrot is sent with him, as spy, protector, foe and foil. As the narrative shifts between the perspectives of Parrot and Olivier, and their picaresque travels together and apart - in love and politics, prisons and the world of art"--Jacket. Olivier is the traumatized child of aristocratic survivors of the French Revolution. Parrot is the motherless son of an itinerant English printer. They are born on different sides of history, but their lives will be connected in the United States by an enigmatic one-armed marquis.

Description

This is the story of two men who begin their lives on different ends of the human spectrum. Olivier is an aristocrat, born in France just after the Revolution, while Parrot is the son of an itinerant English printer. Part of Carey's provocative genius is that, even in the title, Parrot is named before Olivier: it's the late 18th century and both men have swallowed the handcuffs of history. The servant and master. The dreamer and the dreamt. The men travel to America together, land in New York, embark on journeys that have both private and mythic overtones in the "you-knighted states." Ramshackle prisons. Convict ships. Broadway brawls. Land deals. Penal colonies. The small revolutions of human desire and failure.

Subjects

Other Editions

  • Parrot and Olivier in AmericaPaperbackFaber & Faber2010-01-01

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