TRUE HISTORY OF THE KELLY GANG

Peter Carey, Booker Prize-winning author of Oscar and Lucinda, powerfully evokes the legend of nineteenth-century Australian outlaw Ned Kelly in this novel narrated in defiantly descriptive prose by the barely literate bushranger himself. To his pursuers, Kelly is nothing but a monstrous criminal, a thief and a murderer. To his own people, the lowly class of ordinary Australians, he is a hero, defying the authority of the English to direct their lives. Indentured by his bootlegger mother to a famous horse thief (who was also her lover), Ned sees his first prison cell at fifteen and by the age of twenty-six has become the most wanted man in the wild colony of Victoria, taking over whole towns and defying the law until he is finally captured and hanged. Here is a classic outlaw tale, made alive by the skill of a great novelist.