Thomas Keneally

"Thomas Keneally recounts history with the uncanny skill of a great novelist whose only interest is to lay bare the human heart in all its hope and pain. As he was able to do in Schindler's List, he shows us in The Great Shame a people despised and rejected to the point of death, who in the face of all their sorrows manage to keep their souls. This story of oppression, famine, and emigration—a principal chapter in the story of...

"Based on true events, this beautifully rendered novel from the author of Schindler's List and The Daughters of Mars brilliantly explores a World War II prison camp, where Japanese prisoners resolve to take drastic action to wipe away their shame. Alice is a young woman living on her father-in-law's farm on the edge of an Australian country town, while her husband is held prisoner in Europe. When Giancarlo, an Italian anarchist at the prisoner-of-war...

From one of our greatest living writers, a bold and timely novel about sin cloaked in sacrament, shame that enforces silence, and the courage of one priest who dares to speak truth to power. Sent away from his native Australia to Canada due to his radical preaching against the Vietnam War, apartheid, and other hot button issues, Father Frank Docherty made for himself a satisfying career as a psychologist and monk. When he returns to Australia to lecture...

"From the acclaimed author of Schindlers List comes the epic, unforgettable story of two sisters whose lives are transformed by the cataclysm of the First World War. In 1915, Naomi and Sally Durance, two spirited Australian sisters, join the war effort as nurses, escaping the confines of their fathers farm and carrying a guilty secret with them. Though they are used to tending the sick, nothing could have prepared them for what they confront, first...

Edward Dickens, the tenth child of author Charles Dickens, has consistently let down his parents. Unable to apply himself at school and adrift in life, the teenaged boy is sent to Australia in the hopes that he can make something of himself - or at least fall out of the public eye. Determined to prove to his parents and more importantly, himself, that he can succeed in this vast and unfamiliar wilderness, Edward works hard at his new life amidst various...

Discusses the Gorta Mor in 1840s Ireland, the famine in British-controlled Bengal in 1943, and the string of famines in Ethiopia in the late 20th century, and explores the concept that while famine can be caused by crop failures and weather conditions, famines are worsened by man-made choices such as politics and social and religious ideology.

Keneally tells the tale of the unlikely encounter that propelled him to write about Oskar Schindler, and of the impact of his extraordinary account on people around the world. Australian writer Keneally met Leopold "Poldek" Pfefferberg, the owner of a Beverly Hills luggage shop, in 1981. Poldek, a Polish Jew and a Holocaust survivor, had a tale he wanted the world to know. He convinced Keneally to relate the incredible story of "the all-drinking,...

Jimmie Blacksmith is a young Aboriginal half-caste raised in rural Australia at the turn of the century, a boy initiated by his tribe but also educated by a stern Methodist minister. Looking to gain respectability in colonical society, Jimmie finds a white bride while performing back-breaking work on local farms; but cannot escape his skin colour, suffering ongoing racism and oppression. Discovering that he may not be the father of his wife's child,...