Drawing on satiric influences from Swift, Sterne and Dickens, Peter Carey`s novel is a picaresque adventure in two fictional countries resembling the U.S. and Australia. It is the story of Tristan Smith, a boy born in the modest country of Efica during a rehearsal of Macbeth. His mother, an actress and political activist, helps him train for the theater. After she is assassinated, Tristan travels to the culturally and politically dominant Voorstand, purportedly in search of his biological father. He finds a country in the throes of animal veneration, but which thinks nothing of human violence. He assumes the costume and character of Bruder Mouse as he infiltrates the country`s political circles.