First British edition, signed by the author ‘Peter Carey’ on the title-page. Carey’s His Illegal Self is set in the author’s native Australia and the United States, where he has lived since 1990. The novel tells ‘the story of Che – raised in isolated privilege by his New York grandmother, he is the precocious son of radical student activists at Harvard in the late sixties. Yearning for his famous outlaw parents, denied all access to television and the news, he takes hope from his long-haired teenage neighbour, who predicts, They will come for you, man. They’ll break you out of here. Soon Che too is an outlaw: fleeing down subways, abandoning seedy motels at night, he is pitched into a journey that leads him to a hippie commune in the jungle of tropical Queensland. Here he slowly, bravely confronts his life, learning that nothing is what it seems. Who is his real mother? Was that his real father? If all he suspects is true, what should he do? Never sentimental, His Illegal Self is an achingly beautiful story of the love between a young woman and a little boy’ (dustwrapper blurb).

His Illegal Self enjoyed a largely positive critical reception, and was shortlisted for the 2008 Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards and longlisted for the 2010 International Dublin Literary Award.