Oscar and Lucinda
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Oscar and Lucinda is a novel by Australian author Peter Carey. It won the 1988 Booker Prize the year it was released, and the 1989 Miles Franklin Award.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> It was shortlisted in 2008 for The Best of the Booker, in celebration of the prize's 40th anniversary.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Plot
The book tells the story of Oscar Hopkins, an Anglican priest from Devon, England, and Lucinda Leplastrier, a young Australian heiress from Parramatta.
They meet on a ship from England to Australia. Lucinda is the owner of a glass factory in Sydney and is returning from a commercial trip to London. Oscar grew up as the son of a fundamentalist Brethren of Plymouth minister and naturalist, who believes he has joined a more compassionate church with the Anglicans.
The travellers discover that they are both gamblers, one obsessive, the other compulsive. Lucinda bets Oscar that he cannot transport a glass church from Sydney to a remote settlement at Bellingen, some 400 km up the New South Wales coast. This bet changes both their lives forever.
Inspiration
A reviewer for The Guardian commented that the novel was influenced by Father and Son, the autobiography of the English poet Edmund Gosse. The poet described his relation with his father, naturalist and minister Philip Henry Gosse.<ref name="mullan"/>
Carey also noted in his novel some material that he took directly from a book of natural history by the senior Gosse. He concentrates on visual descriptions and information, with glass as a major image and metaphor.<ref name="mullan">Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Adaptation
Template:Main article The novel was adapted nine years later into a film of the same name, released in 1997. It was directed by Gillian Armstrong and starred Ralph Fiennes, Cate Blanchett, and Tom Wilkinson.
References
External links
- Peter Carey discusses Oscar and Lucinda on the BBC World Book Club
- Oscar and Lucinda at the National Film and Sound Archive
- Oscar and Lucinda at IMDB
Template:Peter Carey Template:Miles Franklin Award Template:Booker Prize
- Booker Prize–winning works
- 1988 Australian novels
- Novels by Peter Carey (novelist)
- Miles Franklin Award–winning works
- Novels set in New South Wales
- University of Queensland Press books
- Australian novels adapted into films
- Fiction set in the 1830s
- Fiction set in the 1840s
- Fiction set in the 1850s
- Fiction set in the 1860s