Irene Bobs loves fast driving. Her husband is the best car salesman in
southeastern Australia. Together they enter the 1954 Redex Trial, a
weeks-long endurance contest of a car race that circles the entire
continent. With them is their lanky, fair-haired navigator: deposed quiz
show champion and failed schoolteacher Willie Bachhuber. If they win the
Redex, the Bobs name alone will get them a dealership, and Willie will
have recharged a life currently ground to a halt. But before any of that
might happen, their official strip maps will lead them, without warning,
out of the comfortable white Australia they know so well. A breakneck,
often hilarious, eye-opening adventure that at the same time reminds us
how white people took possession of a timeless culture--the high purpose
they invented, and the crimes they committed along the way--A Long Way
from Home is Peter Carey's late-style masterpiece.