For thirty-nine years Harry Joy has been the quintessential good guy. But one morning Harry has a heart attack on his suburban front lawn, and, for the space of nine minutes, he becomes a dead guy. And although he is resuscitated, he will never be the same. For, as Peter Carey makes abundantly clear in this darkly funny novel, death is sometimes a necessary prelude to real life.

Part The Wizard of Oz, part Dante’s Inferno, and part Australian Book of the Dead, Bliss is a triumph of uninhabited storytelling from a writer of extravagant gifts.