241. Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey
Oscar and Lucinda (Faber and Faber, 1988; 512) by Peter Carey won the Booker Prize in 1988. It was also short-listed for the Best of the Booker in 1993 to celebrate the award's 25th anniversary alongside such books as Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie (the winner), The Conservationist by Nadine Gordimer, Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee, The Ghost Road by Pat Barker, and The Siege of Krishnapur by J. G. Farrell. Oscar and Lucinda is a quasi-romance, quasi-historical, novel narrated by the great grandson of Oscar Hopkins but in an omnipresent manner. The story, though a narration, explored the pathways, decisions, eccentricities, trials and tribulations, and weirdness of Oscar Hopkins and Lucinda Leplastrier. The story traces the lives of these two eccentrics before they met on the Leviathan on their way to Sydney and after they arrived. It details their inchoate love affair, their problems, and their doom. Oscar Hopkins brought up ...