Hello, my name is David Rundsenman and this is Talking Politics. This week we are speaking with Peter Carey, the two-time Booker Prize winning novelist, and we're going to be talking about Trump, conspiracy theories, and what did happen in 1975.

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Peter Carey was in Cambridge yesterday to talk about his new novel, a long way from home,

and I caught up with him just before he went on stage at the Cambridge Literary Festival.

Some of the usual health warnings apply. We were on a slightly squeaky leather sofa.

I think someone emptied a year's worth of recycling outside the window while we were talking.

We weren't just talking about his new book.

One of the reasons he's such an interesting novelist is that a few of his novels are really political,

including some that he's published in recent years.

So we started with one called Parrott and Olivier in America,

which is about my political hero. I've

probably mentioned this before. Alexis de Tocqueville is Peter Carey's reimagining of Tocqueville's

famous trip to the United States in 1831. And if you listen carefully, you'll notice I get the date

wrong when I'm talking to him. We also discussed the novel he wrote before, the one that's just

come out now called Amnesia, which is about a whole host of things. But it's also about

conspiracy theories. And again, you'll hear in a minute he really doesn't like that term.

But the plot at the heart of it is what happened in Australia in 1975.

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