SOURCE: Carey, Peter, and John Bemrose. “Dialogue with a Desperado.” Maclean's 114, no. 13 (26 March 2001): 48, 51.

In the following interview, Carey discusses the importance of Ned Kelly to Australian history, the folklore surrounding Kelly's past, and the events that led up to his writing True History of the Kelly Gang.

In the boardroom of his Toronto publisher, novelist Peter Carey is wondering out loud where he might pose for a photograph. “We could trash the lobby and do it there,” he jokes, intimating, that as the author of a best-selling novel about the Australian bandit and hell-raiser Ned Kelly, he'd look appropriately roguish sitting among the ruins of expensive leather armchairs. The moment seems quintessentially Australian. First there's Carey's accent, which, despite his 11 years of living in New York City, still makes “trash” sound like “tresh.” And then there's the Aussie macho thing, whereby a direct and rough-hewn mateyness—with its...