Oscar and Lucinda

Historical Fiction Australian Fiction Adventure Fiction Victorian Romance Literary Fiction Colonial Fiction Religious Fiction Gambling Fiction

First-edition hardcover of Peter Carey’s Booker Prize-winning “Oscar & Lucinda,” the 1988 Australian masterpiece that fuses Victorian romance with high-stakes gambling and a truly unforgettable glass-church wager. This is the novel that put Carey on the world literary map: the story of repressed Anglican priest Oscar Hopkins and fearless heiress Lucinda Leplastrier, whose shared obsession with risk carries them from the green-felt gaming tables of nineteenth-century Sydney to a wooden paddle-steamer on the remote Bellinger River. Carey’s dazzling, comic-poetic prose turns a quirky courtship into a meditation on faith, colonial ambition, and the price of love.

Collectors prize this first printing for its intact dust-jacket artwork and the solid, unmarked boards that survive here in very-good condition—no ex-library stamps, no gift inscriptions, no cracked hinges or dog-eared corners. The volume is clean, square, and tightly bound, making it shelf-ready for both display and reading. Because later reprints used cheaper paper and lost the subtle embossing on the jacket, a true 1988 first in this state is increasingly scarce on the open market.

For readers, the novel’s special spark lies in Carey’s ability to weave page-turning adventure with literary depth: glass factories, river journeys, forbidden desire, and a climactic bet that still sparks book-club debate decades later. Young adults discovering Carey for the first time and seasoned collectors completing a Booker short-list shelf alike will find this copy a satisfying blend of readability and investment-grade collectability.

Refer to our eBay listing for a full condition report and many more high-quality pictures of this item.

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