Peter Carey's True History of the Kelly Gang was published simultaneously by Faber and Faber in the United Kingdom and by Knopf in the United States in January 2001. The novel received almost universally favorable reviews in Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom, from reviewers writing for mainstream publications as well as those writing for a more academic audience.

Almost all of those reviewers remarked upon what Anthony Quinn, writing in the New York Times Book Review, called Carey's "fully imagined act of historical impersonation." Quinn is here referring to Carey's deft channeling of the voice he first encountered in the historical Ned Kelly's "Jerilderie Letter," the bushranger's own handwritten and wildly poetic account of his exploits, which Carey adopts and adapts to suit his own purposes in True History of the Kelly Gang.

While the last section of the novel is certainly driven by...