AustLit

'The novel is peopled by artists, art dealers, critics, patrons of art, forgers, and curators. For this novel, there were three essential "informants": Stephen Gritt, the head of restoration at the National Gallery of Canada; Frima Fox Hofrichter, an art historian who specializes in Judith Leyster and women painters of the seventeenth century; and Ken Perenyi, a master forger who wrote a fascinating memoir called Caveat Emptor. [...]I think the opposite-that Australians understand they are playing on the world stage, and often at the top tier, across all the artistic fields. [...]the moral forgery at the center of the book is much more interesting to me dramatically, as a fiction writer-and it's also the bigger moral failure, in my view.' (Publication abstract)