Parrot and Olivier in America

The two men at the heart of the novel couldn't be any more different: Olivier is the son of French aristocrats who (barely) survived the French Revolution. Parrot is the motherless son of an itinerate English printer. As the narrative unfurls, shifting between the perspectives of Olivier and Parrot, between the picaresque adventures apart and together, in love and politics, prisons and finance, homelands and brave new lands - a most unlikely friendship begins to take hold. This is an irrepressible, audacious, trenchantly funny new novel from the two-time Booker Prize-winning author Peter Carey.