Thomas Keneally

In the shadow of Auschwitz, a flamboyant German industrialist grew into a living legend to the Jews of Cracow. He was a womaniser, a heavy drinker and a bon viveur, but to them he became a saviour. This is the extraordinary story of Oskar Schindler, who risked his life to protect Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland and who was transformed by the war into a man with a mission, a compassionate angel of mercy.

Schindler's List

Schindler's Ark

Joining the war effort as nurses in 1915, two spirited Australian sisters, carrying a guilty secret, become the friends they never were at home and find themselves courageous in the face of extreme danger as they serve alongside remarkable women during the first World War.

A Novel

The Daughters of Mars

The Improbable Birth of Australia

A Commonwealth of Thieves

Thomas Keneally, the bestselling author of The Daughters of Mars and Schindler’s List, returns with an exquisite exploration of community and country, love and morality, taking place in both prehistoric and modern Australia. An award-winning documentary filmmaker, Shelby Apple is obsessed with reimagining the full story of the Learned Man—a prehistoric man whose remains are believed to be the link between Africa and ancient Australia. From Vietnam to northern Africa and the Australian Outback, Shelby searches for understanding of this enigmatic man from the ancient past, unaware that the two men share a great deal in common. Some 40,000 years in the past, the Learned Man has made his home alongside other members of his tribe. Complex and deeply introspective, he reveres tradition, loyalty, and respect for his ancestors. Willing to sacrifice himself for the greater good, the Learned Man cannot conceive that a man millennia later could relate to him in heart and feeling. In this “meditation on last things, but still electric with life, passion and appetite” (The Australian), Thomas Keneally weaves an extraordinary dual narrative that effortlessly transports you around the world and across time, offering “a hymn to idealism and to human development” (Sydney Morning Herald).

The Book of Science and Antiquities

Australians

Searching for Schindler

Examines the life of nineteenth-century politician and military leader Dan Sickles, a notorious womanizer and scoundrel who killed his wife's lover and, thanks to the influence of political friends, got away with murder.

The Life of the Notorious Civil War General Dan Stickles

American Scoundrel

Provides an analysis of the influence the Irish had on the world in the nineteenth century as a result of the population decrease due to famine and emigration to Australia and America.

And the Triumph of the Irish in the English-Speaking World

The Great Shame

Keneally's magnificent story of a young officer in a penal colony during the founding days of Australia transports readers through layer after layer of life in Sydney Cove, Australia. Advertising in New York Review of Books and Village Voice Literary Supplement.

Playmaker

A tormented and humiliated mixed-race Australian man reaches his breaking point and takes terrifying revenge on his abusers in this critically acclaimed novel based on actual events In Australia at the turn of the twentieth century, Jimmie Blacksmith is desperate to figure out where he belongs. Half-Anglo and half-Aboriginal, he feels out of place in both cultures. Schooled in the ways of white society by a Protestant missionary, Jimmie forsakes tribal customs, adopts the white man’s religion, marries a white woman, and seeks a life of honest labor in a world Aborigines are normally barred from entering. But he will always be seen as less than human by the employers who cheat and exploit him, the fellow workers who deride him, and the wife who betrays him—and a man can only take so much. Driven by hopelessness, rage, and despair, Jimmie commits a series of savage and terrible acts of vengeance and becomes something he never thought he’d be: a murderer, a fugitive, and, ultimately, a legend. Based on shocking real-life events, The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith is a powerful tale of racism, identity, intolerance, and murder from the celebrated bestselling author of Schindler’s List, Thomas Keneally. This magnificent historical novel remains a stunning, provocative, and profoundly affecting reading experience.

The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith

In November 1918, in a railway carriage in a forest near Paris, six men meet to negotiate an end to the terrible slaughter of the First World War. Threatened by famine and anarchy at home, the Germans struggle to mitigate the punishing terms offered by the Allies. But both sides are torn by battle exhaustion and a confusion that far exceed their national differences. In this riveting combination of history, speculation and rumour, Thomas Keneally recreates the personalities, ideals, prejudices, arguments and desperate measures that resulted in the armistice which would shape the future of Europe. Price: £5.99 Edition: Second Format:198 x 129 mm Imprint: Sceptre Markets:BCN ex Can Four of Thomas Keneally's novels have been shortlisted for the Booker prize and SCHINDLER'S ARK (filmed by Steven Spielberg as Schindler's List) has sold more copies than any other Booker Prize-winner. He is also the author of several works of non-fiction, including THE PLACE WHERE SOULS ARE BORN, about the American Southwest. BIRTHPLACE: New South Wales, Australia. WHEREABOUTS: Sydney, Australia PREVIOUS BOOKS: INCLUDE BLOOD RED, SISTER ROSE; CONFEDERATES; THE PLAYMAKER; THE PLACE WHERE SOULS ARE BORN; A FAMILY MADNESS; TOWARDS ASMARA; WOMAN OF THE INNER SEA; JACKO; SCHINDLER'S LIST THE PROMOTION *Part of the new Sceptre relaunch SELLING POINTS (1)Shortlisted for the Booker Prize (2) Publication will coincide with Keneally's new novel A RIVER TOWN and the paperback of JACKO. (3) Author PR on publication. Keneally will be here to take part in the Sceptre promotion.

Gossip from the Forest

The Playmaker

The extraordinary Booker Prize shortlisted story of a black man's revenge against an unjust and intolerant society. Thomas Keneally was born in Sydney Australia in 1935. He studied to be a Catholic priest but abandoned his vocation to take up teaching and writing. He is the author of numerous works of fiction and non-fiction including "Schindlers Ark" which won the Booker Prize in 1982 and was made into a successful film.

"From within the womb, Sal and Brian's unborn child relates his experiences: multiple threats to his existence, including the apparent end of his parents' marriage and his father's desire to have him aborted."--Amazon.

Passenger

A disillusioned reporter joins three fellow Westerners on a journey of discovery through the raging fires of a brutal East African conflict With his own life in flux, Timothy Darcy, an Australian journalist, finds escape in the ongoing turmoil of Eritrea. Entering the war-torn East African region with three Western strangers on missions of their own—Christine, a young Frenchwoman searching for her lost cinematographer father; Lady Julia, an aging British feminist; and Mark Henry, an American aid worker whose motives are masked in shadow—Darcy is plunged into the center of a twenty-five-year-long conflict between Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie’s army and Eritrean guerillas. Witnessing scenes of brutality, starvation, and oppression as they venture ever deeper into the true heart of darkness, the dispassionate reporter and his companions will never be the same. Based on his own firsthand experiences in Africa, Thomas Keneally, the acclaimed Man Booker Prize–winning author of Schindler’s List, delivers a powerful and profoundly moving novel of war, injustice, commitment, courage, and self-discovery set amid the horrors and tragedy of the vicious Eritrean conflict.

A Novel of Africa

To Asmara

Palestinian terrorists hijack a plane whose passengers include a troupe of Aboriginal dancers completely unsympathetic to the cause of their "fellow" victims of imperialism.

Flying Hero Class

Fleeing from her husband, grieving for the loss of her sons, a woman must ultimately face her husband.

Woman of the Inner Sea

The authos of the Booker Prize-winning, bestselling Schindler's List presents a novel about social justice and the inability of humans to hide from their own original sins--no matter how far they run. When Tim Shea leaves his native Ireland for Australia, he thinks he has escaped the prejudices and class structures for good. But it's only a matter of time before he realizes that his adopted country is no more free of intolerance that Great Britain.

Michael Niblett

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