Oscar and Lucinda

Oscar and Lucinda is a novel by Peter Carey, which won the 1988 Booker Prize, and the 1989 Miles Franklin Award.

It tells the story of Oscar Hopkins, the son of a Brethren minister who becomes an English Anglican priest, and Lucinda Leplastrier, a young Australian heiress who buys a glass factory. They meet on the boat over to Australia, and discover that they are both obsessive gamblers. Lucinda bets Oscar that he cannot transport a glass church into the outback in one piece. This bet changes both their lives forever.

The novel partly takes its inspiration from Father and Son, the autobiography of the English poet Edmund Gosse, which describes his relationship with his father, Philip Henry Gosse.

A film was made from the book in 1997, directed by Gillian Armstrong and starring Ralph Fiennes, Cate Blanchett and Tom Wilkinson.