From the two-time Booker Prize–winning author and recipient of the Commonwealth Prize comes this new novel about obsession, deception, and redemption, at once an engrossing psychological suspense story and a work of highly charged, fiendishly funny literary fiction.

Michael—a.k.a. “Butcher”—Boone is an ex–“really famous” painter: opinionated, furious, brilliant, and now reduced to living in the remote country house of his biggest collector and acting as caretaker for his younger brother, Hugh, a damaged man of imposing physicality and childlike emotional volatility. Alone together they’ve forged a delicate and shifting equilibrium, a balance instantly destroyed when a mysterious young woman named Marlene walks out of a rainstorm and into their lives on three-inch Manolo Blahnik heels. Beautiful, smart, and ambitious, she’s also the daughter-in-law of the late great painter Jacques Liebovitz, one of Butcher’s earliest influences. She’s sweet to Hugh and falls in love with Butcher, and they reciprocate in kind. And she sets in motion a chain of events that could be the making—or the ruin—of them all.

Told through the alternating points of view of the brothers—Butcher’s urbane, intelligent, caustic observations contrasting with Hugh’s bizarre, frequently poetic, utterly unique voice—Theft reminds us once again of Peter Carey’s remarkable gift for creating indelible, fascinating characters and a narrative as gripping as it is deliriously surprising.</p>

彼得·凱裏(Pete r carey)，1943年生於墨爾本市郊小鎮，曾在大學學習化學，未及畢業改做廣告設計，後遊曆歐洲並轉嚮文學創作，現居住在紐約。

凱裏是當代澳大利亞文學領軍人物，作品已被翻譯成二十多種文字。是世界惟一的兩位二度榮獲布剋奬的作傢之一，另一位則是南非的諾貝爾文學奬得主庫切。因此有評論傢預言，凱裏將是諾貝爾文學奬最有力的競爭者。凱裏的作品怪誕、幽默，具有寓言式小說和科幻小說的特徵。

因書寫《凱利幫真史》等曆史題材的小說而被譽為澳大利亞“民族神話創造者”的凱裏，是一位關注現代人生存睏境、具有國際色彩的作傢。