Peter Carey was born May 7, 1943, in the town of Bacchus Marsh in the Australian state of Victoria. He was the youngest of three children, and his parents, Percival Stanley and Helen Jean Carey, owned and operated a local automobile dealership. Carey attended Geelong Grammar School, a private school, and enrolled in a science program at Monash University in 1961. He performed poorly there and left after his first year. In 1962, he took a job as an advertising copywriter in Melbourne, and in 1964, married Leigh Weetman. From 1967 to 1970, Carey lived in London and traveled throughout Europe. Between the time he left Monash University in the early 1960s until he left London at the beginning of the 1970s, he had finished three novels that were never published. He returned to Melbourne and took another job in advertising. In 1973, he finished a fourth novel that was accepted for publication, but...