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  • Published: 1 September 2009
  • ISBN: 9781741669176
  • Imprint: Vintage Australia
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 254
  • RRP: $35.00

Stealing Picasso




From Australia's foremost comic novelist comes a hilarious satire of the art world, based on a true story.

From Australia's foremost comic novelist comes a hilarious satire of the art world, based on a true story.

Harry Broome dreams of being a famous painter. And when a sophisticated French beauty buys all the paintings at his first exhibition, he knows he's on his way. But in the art world nothing is as it seems.

Before long, to pay his debts and save his reputation, he is trapped in a plot to steal Picasso's Weeping Woman from the National Gallery of Victoria. She is the gallery's greatest acquisition, and when she goes missing the city's many treasure hunters come out to find her: a corrupt tycoon who knew Picasso, a gay escort obsessed with Michael Jackson, a bent barrister, a gang of bikies, a hit man, the gallery director, the Minister for Police. The Weeping Woman is priceless and life is cheap.

Stretching from pre-war France to contemporary Australia, with a captivating cast of eccentric characters and a superbly engaging plot based on a true story, Stealing Picasso tells of an art theft and a forgery and their extraordinary repercussions.

'Anson Cameron is one of the most interesting writers of his generation' -- Weekend Australian

  • Published: 1 September 2009
  • ISBN: 9781741669176
  • Imprint: Vintage Australia
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 254
  • RRP: $35.00

About the author

Anson Cameron

Anson Cameron has written six critically acclaimed novels: Silences Long Gone, Tin Toys, Confessing the Blues, Lies I Told About a Girl, Stealing Picasso and The Last Pulse as well as two collections of short stories, Nice Shootin’ Cowboy and Pepsi Bears and Other Stories, and the childhood memoir Boyhoodlum. He was born in Shepparton in 1961 and lives in Melbourne where he writes a column for the Age newspaper.

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Praise for Stealing Picasso

The best black humour to have emerged from Australia in years

Australian Financial Review

Cameron is one of the most interesting writers of his generation and this is a playful book

Weekend Australian

Funny and energetic, crammed with wonderful, viciously barbed set pieces

Australian Review of Books

[Tin Toys] is the finest and funniest picaresque novel to be published in Australia since Peter Carey's Illywhacker

Sydney Morning Herald