Oscar Hopkins is an Oxford seminarian with a passion for gambling. Lucinda Leplastrier is a Sydney heiress with a fascination for glass. The year is 1864. When they meet on the boat to Australia their lives will be forever changed... Daring, rich, intense and bizarre, Peter Carey's Booker prize-winning novel is a brilliant achievement — a moving love story and a historical tour de force that is also powerfully contemporary.