The Tax Inspector

Granny Catchprice runs her family business (and her family) with senility, cunning, and a handbag full of explosives. Her daughter Cathy would rather be singing Country & Western than selling cars, while Benny Catchprice, sixteen and seriously psychopathic, wants to transform a failing auto franchise into an empire—and himself into an angel. Out of the confrontation between the Catchprices and their unwitting nemesis, a beautiful and very pregnant agent of the Australian Taxation Office, Peter Carey, author of Oscar and Lucinda, creates an endlessly surprising and fearfully convincing novel."Fascinating and refreshing...brilliant." —San Francisco Chronicle

"Glorious entertainment, storytelling at its best, a piece of richly comic invention...mesmerizing." —Boston Globe

"[Carey's] work has a wild, chance-taking quality that seems to put him in harmony with the spirit of this age. If he keeps on as he has, he will prove to be one of its finest novelists." —Chicago TribunePeter Carey was born in Australia and now lives in New York.  His internationally acclaimed novel, Oscar and Lucinda, won the Booker Prize in 1988.

--Winner of the Booker Prize