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 True History of the Kelly Gang
by Peter Carey
Knopf, 2001
Ned Kelly is probably best known as the Australian bushwacker, or bandit, who made inch-thick armour out of farm implements. He was hanged in the 1880s for the murder of three policemen, not long after the rest of his gang was killed in a shootout with police. Yet despite this criminal life and his sticky end, Kelly is a national hero in Australia.
When Booker Prize-winning author Peter Carey began considering a book on Kelly, he says he was more interested in what this said about Australians. In his novel True History of the Kelly Gang, he tells the story from Ned Kelly's point of view, as the son of pennyless immigrants living under a corrupt colonial system.
(From the publisher) Out of nineteenth-century Australia rides a hero of his people and a man for all nations, in this masterpiece by the Booker Prize-winning author of Oscar and Lucinda and Jack Maggs. Exhilarating, hilarious, panoramic, and immediately engrossing, it is also—at a distance of many thousand miles and more than a century—a Great American Novel.
This is Ned Kelly's true confession, in his own words and written on the run for an infant daughter he has never seen. To the authorities, this son of dirt-poor Irish immigrants was a born thief and, ultimately, a cold-blooded murderer; to most other Australians, he was a scapegoat and patriot persecuted by "English" landlords and their agents.
With his brothers and two friends, Kelly eluded a massive police manhunt for 20 months, living by his wits and strong heart, supplementing his bushwhacking skills with ingenious bank robberies while enjoying the support of most everyone not in uniform. He declined to flee overseas when he could, bound to win his jailed mother's freedom by any means possible, including his own surrender. In the end, however, she served out her sentence in the same Melbourne prison where, in 1880, her son was hanged.
Still his country's most powerful legend, Ned Kelly is here chiefly a man in full: devoted son, loving husband, fretful father, and loyal friend, now speaking as if from the grave. With this mythic outlaw and the story of his mighty travails and exploits, and with all the force of a classic Western, Peter Carey has breathed life into a historical figure who transcends all borders and embodies tragedy, perseverance, and freedom.
About the author
(From the publisher) Born in Australia in 1943, Peter Carey lives in New York City with his wife, Alison Summers, and their two sons. The author of six previous novels and a collection of stories, he won the Booker Prize for Oscar and Lucinda; his other honors include the Commonwealth Prize and the Miles Franklin Award.
Peter Carey's previous works include Jack Maggs, Oscar and Lucinda, The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith, Bliss, Illywhacker, The Fat Man in History, and The Tax Inspector.
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