Amnesia was published by Penguin Books Australia in 2014. Gaby Baillieux, a young Australian woman, releases a computer worm called Angel Worm that opens every electronically locked prison door in Australia — and, inadvertently, several American military facilities. Felix Moore, a disgraced left-wing journalist, is tasked with writing Gaby’s story and must uncover the chain of events that led a suburban girl to commit an act of cyber-warfare.
The novel’s deepest concern was with the “amnesia” of its title: Australia’s collective forgetting of the 1975 constitutional crisis, in which the elected Whitlam government was dismissed by the Governor-General in circumstances that many Australians believe involved CIA interference.
Collecting Amnesia
First edition (Penguin Books Australia, Melbourne, 2014): Boards with dust jacket.
Market values:
- Australian first edition, fine in jacket: $15–$35
- UK first edition (Faber): $10–$20
Projected values (2026–2036): Modest appreciation.
The Cyber-Thriller
A young Australian woman releases a computer worm that opens every electronic prison door in Australia — and, accidentally, in the United States. An ageing journalist is tasked with telling her story, and the novel becomes a hall of mirrors: who is manipulating whom, what really happened, and how much of the “true story” is fabrication? Carey uses the cyber-thriller framework to explore the surveillance state, the Wikileaks era, and Australia’s complex relationship with American power.
Frequently Asked Questions
How does Carey keep reinventing himself? Each Carey novel adopts a radically different voice, setting, and narrative structure. He moves from nineteenth-century pastiche to contemporary thriller, from first-person picaresque to multi-narrator literary fiction, refusing to repeat himself. This formal restlessness is both his greatest strength and, for some readers, a source of inconsistency.