On holiday in Malaysia in the early 1970s, the lady editor of a London poetry magazine is intrigued to see a middle-aged white man in a dirty sarong, squatting in a shophouse reading verses by Rilke.

He appears to be working as a bicycle repairman, but how can he have got here?

He turns out to be Christopher Chubb, an embittered Australian pedant who has been comprehensively ruined by his own practical joke.

Chubb, it turns out, was notorious for having fabricated a working class poet named Bob McCorkle. Playing on the readiness of a literary editor to believe he had discovered raw brilliance, his faked up and hollow verses are published.

Up to this point, Carey is drawing on real history - a very similar hoax in 1946. But then My Life As A Fake spins off into a wild, Gothic caper.

Carey draws the reader into the comeuppance of Christopher Chubb with masterly skill. Along the way, there is much black comedy at the expense of the literary world.

Published in hardback by Faber and Faber. Priced £16.99