I just finished this book, winner of the 2001 Booker Prize, True History of the Kelly Gang, by Peter Carey. Like the author's another Booker winning novel, Oscar and Lucinda, it's a story staged in the early days of Australia. The Kelly Gang story is well known among Australian in a similar way The Water Margin among Chinese, because the main characters are all considered outlaws by the authorities in their time, but I think it's also the reason why their stories are passed on by generation and generation. Both stories represent a window for us to look back to the society our ancestors had been through and in some way, make us understand who we are and where we come from.
The book is called a novel because the author provides a wife and a daughter to the main character, Ned Kelly. By doing so, what I read is actually a vivid story with warm human touch, not just a cold description telling about a historical incident. I think it's the magic that a great novelist can do and in which readers can enjoy. Like other Booker Prize winners, The Remains of the Day, Staying On, The English Patient and some more others, the judges of the prize seem to prefer stories that have historical depth and provide readers with a particular way to discover an important period of time within a society.
There are a lot of movies about the Kelly Gang, but this one with some well known actors in it has not been released in Taiwan. Too bad.