Richard Flanagan - First person

The young and penniless writer Kif Kehlmann receives a call in the middle of the night from the infamous conman Siegfried Heidl, who will soon stand trial for defrauding banks of millions of dollars. He offers Kehlmann a deal: he will receive ten thousand dollars if he puts his memories on paper as a ghost writer in six weeks.
While writing, Kehlmann is gripped by the terror that Heidl will mutilate him. As the deadline approaches, the young author becomes increasingly uncertain: is he writing a memoir, or is Heidl rewriting him, his life, his future? Who is Siegfried Heidl - and who is Kif Kehlmann?

The story of the novel is based on the events of the life of one of the most famous Australian crooks, John Friedrich, whose memoir was written by the then thirty-year-old Flanagan in a month and a half.

"What happened? Why did we sell our freedom? Were we dizzy with it, lost in it, unworthy of it, terrified of it? I don't know. At the age of twenty, we decided we were going to live. And later? We made a different decision later."