The first Penguin edition of Peter Carey's My Life as a Fake, with a cover by Michael Leunig In steamy, fetid Kuala Lumpur in 1972, Sarah Wode-Douglass, editor of a London poetry journal, meets the mysterious Christopher Chubb. An Australian literary hoaxer, Chubb is carting around a manuscript likely filled with deceit. In this dubious work Sarah recognises a real genius. But whose genius? She is drawn into a fantastic story of imposture, murder, kidnapping, and exile, which couldn't be true unless its teller were mad. Or perhaps haunted. My Life as a Fakeis a Frankenstein story in which what is imagined comes to life and exacts its due. 'Reads like the impossible offspring of a fictional ménage-á-trois involving Pale Fire, Lord Jim, and Our Man in Havana.' The Atlantic Monthly 'Dazzles the reader with heady ideas . . . then catapults us into madcap action.' The Village Voice 'A charismatically furious piece of work, brilliantly meshing its ethical and artistic debate with a rich human drama.' The Times