The central character of Australian novelist Richard Flanagan's book "Gould's Book of Fish" is a convict who paints fish. Or maybe he's not. Flanagan leaves the reader to wonder whether his story is a free-wheeling tale of life which set in a British penal colony in Tasmania, or perhaps a figment of the imagination of a modern lowlife faking antiques to sell to the tourist trade. The book has been described as a modern masterpiece in Australia, part "Papillion", part "Baron Munchausen".. It is already selling well in the US. Flanagan told Minesota Public Radio's Euan Kerr the novel grew from a single experience.