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Bliss (novel)

Bliss AuthorPeter CareyCountryAustraliaLanguageEnglishPublisherUQP (Australia)Faber and Faber (UK)Harper & Row (US)1981Media typePrint (Hardback & Paperback)Pages336 (first edition, hardback)ISBN0-571-11769-4 (first edition, hardback)OCLC8075118Followed byIllywhacker
Bliss is the first novel by Australian writer Peter Carey. Published in 1981, the book won that year's Miles Franklin Award.

Plot
Written as a dark, comic fable, the story concerns an advertising executive, Harry Joy, who briefly 'dies' of a heart attack. On being resuscitated, he realizes that the life he has previously drifted amiably through is in fact Hell � literally so to Harry. His wife is unfaithful, while his son is selling drugs, and his daughter is a communist selling herself to buy them. In one of the novel's more shocking scenes, glimpsed through a window, incest occurs.

Redemption comes in the form of Honey Barbara � a pantheist, healer and prostitute. In the words of the book's blurb "Honey is to Harry as Isis is to Osiris. Together they conquer Hell and retire to the forest where their children inherit the legend of paradise regained." But Harry must die for a second time to be truly saved.

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