Carl Shuker

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Shuker, Carl (1974 – ) is a novelist. He is a graduate of the University of Canterbury and holds a Masters in Creative Writing from Victoria University of Wellington.

In 2006 Shuker was awarded the Prize in Modern Letters for his first novel, The Method Actors. This was the first time debut work has been awarded the Prize. The novel began as a manuscript for Shuker’s Masters in Creative Writing and draws on his time spent living in Tokyo. Infamously rejected by New Zealand publishers, the novel was published in 2005 by American publisher Shoemaker & Hoard.

Reviewed in the Listener as one of the best books of 2005, David Eggleton comments that ‘The Method Actors is designed to attract – and worthy of hyperbolic adjectives: it’s a fantastic bullet-train ride to Tokyo Central. Fasten your seat-belt.’ Kirkus Reviews described the novel as ‘Lost in Translation for the noir crowd: a carefully plotted tale of a decidedly postmodern bent, with plenty of hip name-checking and lots of mind-altering substances to keep things moving.’

A second novel, The Lazy Boys, was published in 2006. The protaganist of The Lazy Boys is Richey ‘Souse’ Sauer, a self-destructive, eighteen-year-old university drop-out. Attempting to escape his middle-class upbringing in Timaru, The Lazy Boys follows Richey’s fall into a brutal nihilism. Reviewing the novel in The Lumière Reader, Charles Bisley comments that ‘This isn’t the rollicking world of Baxter’s ‘Ode to Mixed Flatting’. Not a picaresque genre piece like Scarfies. It is a provocative satire, a horror story. It turns squalid and deep, taking the reader into territory that some will recoil from.’ The Lazy Boys was also reviewed in the Listener as one of the best books for 2006.

MEDIA LINKS AND CLIPS

• Carl Shuker’s website