True History of the Kelly Gang

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True History of the Kelly Gang is a novel by Australian writer Peter Carey. It won the 2001 Booker Prize and the Commonwealth Writers Prize in the same year. Despite the title, the book is essentially a fictional variation on the Ned Kelly story.

The novel is presented as having been hastily written on scraps of paper by Ned Kelly himself, and it expands on the story told in the real life Jerilderie Letter. Carey departs from what is known about Kelly's life by providing him with a lover and a daughter, for whom he has been recording his life history whilst on the run from the police.

The novel is written in a distinctive vernacular style, with little in the way of punctuation or grammar. Although there is much profanity in the novel, it has all been censored (save the racist terms) for the benefit of Kelly's fictional daughter.

The book does however remain close to the real chronology of Ned Kelly's life and captures (and expands) the tone of Kelly's actual writing style as shown in his [Jerilderie Letter].

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