Colonial Entrapment: A Study of Peter Carey’s The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith

Peter Carey, an internationally acclaimed Australian novelist has received the Booker Prize twice. Carey‟s fiction highlights the hidden parts of Australian history and the aftermath of colonialism. The Historical fiction of Peter Carey sheds light on the economic, religious, educational, political and cultural exploitation of the colonized by the colonizer. His novel, The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith, discusses two imaginary countries, Efica and Voorstand, symbolizing Australia and America respectively. Efica is a poor country while Voorstand is a rich country. The Effican‟s struggle against colonial power to protect their culture and national identity is exposed in this narrative. This article discusses how economically, politically and technologically powerful nations, through colonialism, occupy weaker nations. This paper also incorporates the cultural, economical, political and technological entrapment and exploitation of the people of Efica by the powerful nation Voorstand. Almost all the characters in The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith are entrapped culturally and economically. This paper analyses entrapment at various political, economical, religious, technological and cultural levels