Peter Careys first novel and first Miles Franklin winner, Bliss remains a work ahead of its time. Īustralian singer-songwriter James Gabriel Keogh took his stage name Vance Joy from Harry Joy's grandfather in this novel. Buy Bliss by Peter Carey for 24.00 at Mighty Ape NZ. Tom Wright adapted in 2018 a stage version for the Malthouse Theatre, Melbourne, and the Belvoir, Sydney. Ĭommissioned by Opera Australia, Brett Dean and Amanda Holden wrote an opera of the same name, which premiered in March 2010 at the Sydney Opera House, directed by Neil Armfield, conducted by Elgar Howarth, and featuring Peter Coleman-Wright as Harry Joy. In 1985 Bliss was adapted into a film of the same name, directed by Ray Lawrence and starring Barry Otto. Together they conquer Hell and retire to the forest where their children inherit the legend of paradise regained.' But Harry must die for a second time to be truly saved. It takes dying during a heart attack for Harry Joy to realise that the life he thought was happy is actually hellish. In the words of the book's blurb 'Honey is to Harry as Isis is to Osiris. Peter Careys first novel and first Miles Franklin winner, Bliss remains a work ahead of its time.

Redemption comes in the form of Honey Barbara – a pantheist, healer and prostitute. In one of the novel's more shocking scenes, glimpsed through a window, incest occurs. His wife is unfaithful, while his son is selling drugs, and his daughter is a communist selling herself to buy them. Harry Joy is 39, an ad-man in an unnamed Australian city, who while mowing his lawn one day has a heart. On being resuscitated, he realizes that the life he has previously drifted amiably through is in fact Hell – literally so to Harry. Written as a dark, comic fable, the story concerns an advertising executive, Harry Joy, who briefly 'dies' of a heart attack. Published in 1981, the book won that year's Miles Franklin Award. Bliss is the first novel by Australian writer Peter Carey.

Bliss by peter carey