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'I lost my own father at 12 yrs of age and know what it is to be raised on lies and silences my dear daughter you are presently too young to understand a word I write but this history is for you and will contain no single lie may I burn in hell if I speak false.' In a dazzling act of ventriloquism, Peter Carey gives the Australian outlaw Ned Kelly a voice so wild, passionate and original that it is impossible not to believe that the famous bush ranger himself is speaking from beyond the grave. Carey gives us Ned Kelly as orphan, as Oedipus, as horse thief, farmer, bush ranger, reformer, bank-robber, police-killer and, finally, as his country's beloved Robin Hood. In 1878 Francis Harty, a poor farmer, said, 'Ned Kelly is the best bloody man that has ever been in Benalla, I would fight up to my knees in blood for him - I have known him for years, I would take his word sooner than another man's oath'. By the time of his hanging in 1880 a whole country would seem to agree - and it is a measure of Peter Carey's achievement that he has not only made art from his country's great story but that he persuades us all to understand the true measure of that 'best bloody man'.

Reviews

"A spectacular feat of imagination."-"The Boston Globe
""Vastly entertaining.... Triumphantly eclectic, as if Huck Finn and Shakespeare had joined forces to prettify the legend of Jesse James."-"The New York Times
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"The ingenuity, empathy, and poetic ear that the novelist brings to his feat of imposture cannot be rated too high."-John Updike, "The New Yorker
""Carey succeeds in creating an account that not only feels authentic but also passes as a serious novel and solid, old-fashioned 'entertainment.' A big, meaty novel, blending Dickens and Cormac McCarthy with a distinctly
Australian strain of melancholy."-"San Francisco Chronicle
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"Abravura performance.... Rewards the persistent reader with a powerful emotional experience."-"The Wall Street Journal
""Carey's pen writes with an ink that is two parts archaic and one part modern and colors a prose that rocks and cajoles the reader into a certainty that Ned Kelly is fit company not only for Jack Palance and Clint Eastwood but for Thomas Jefferson and perhaps even a bodhisattva."-"Los Angeles Times
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"The power and charm of [this book] arise not from fidelity to facts but rather from the voice Carey invents for Ned Kelly...."-"Time
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"So adroit that you never doubt it's Kelly's own words you're reading in the headlong, action-packed story."-"Newsweek
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"This novel is worth our best attention."-"The" "Washington Post Book World
""An avalanche of a novel.... Cary has raised a national legend to the level of an international myth."-"Christian Science Monitor"
"Packed with incident, alive with comedy and pathos . . . contains pretty much everything you could ask of a novel." -"TheNew York Times Book Review"
"The ingenuity, empathy, and poetic ear that the novelist brings to his feat of imposture cannot be rated too high." -John Updike, "The New Yorker
"
"Carey's pen writes with an ink that is two parts archaic and one part modern and colors a prose that rocks and cajoles the reader into a certainty that Ned Kelly is fit company not only for Jack Palance and Clint Eastwood but for Thomas Jefferson and perhaps even a bodhisattva." -"Los Angeles Times
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