Thomas Keneally

Author profile

born

October 07, 1935 in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

gender

male

website

http://www.randomhouse.com.au/Author/Keneally,%...

genre

Literature & Fiction, Nonfiction

About this author

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Thomas Michael Keneally, AO (born 7 October 1935) is an Australian novelist, playwright and author of non-fiction. He is best known for writing Schindler's Ark, the Booker Prize winning novel of 1982 which was inspired by the efforts of Poldek Pfefferberg, a Holocaust survivor. The book would later be adapted to Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture.

Life and career

Born in Sydney, Keneally was educated at St Patrick's College, Strathfield, where a writing prize was named after him. He entered St Patrick's Seminary, Manly to train as a Catholic priest but left before his ordination. He worked as a Sydney schoolteacher before his success as a novelist, and he was a lecturer at the University of New...more Thomas Michael Keneally, AO (born 7 October 1935) is an Australian novelist, playwright and author of non-fiction. He is best known for writing Schindler's Ark, the Booker Prize winning novel of 1982 which was inspired by the efforts of Poldek Pfefferberg, a Holocaust survivor. The book would later be adapted to Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture.

Life and career

Born in Sydney, Keneally was educated at St Patrick's College, Strathfield, where a writing prize was named after him. He entered St Patrick's Seminary, Manly to train as a Catholic priest but left before his ordination. He worked as a Sydney schoolteacher before his success as a novelist, and he was a lecturer at the University of New England (1968–70). He has also written screenplays, memoirs and non-fiction books.

Keneally was known as "Mick" until 1964 but began using the name Thomas when he started publishing, after advice from his publisher to use what was really his first name. He is most famous for his Schindler's Ark (1982) (later republished as Schindler's List), which won the Booker Prize and is the basis of the film Schindler's List. Many of his novels are reworkings of historical material, although modern in their psychology and style.

Keneally has also acted in a handful of films. He had a small role in The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (based on his novel) and played Father Marshall in the Fred Schepisi movie, The Devil's Playground (1976) (not to be confused with a similarly-titled documentary by Lucy Walker about the Amish rite of passage called rumspringa).

In 1983 he was made an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO). He is an Australian Living Treasure.

He is a strong advocate of the Australian republic, meaning the severing of all ties with the British monarchy, and published a book on the subject Our Republic in 1993. Several of his Republican essays appear on the web site of the Australian Republican Movement.

Keneally is a keen supporter of rugby league football, in particular the Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles club of the NRL. He made an appearance in the 2007 rugby league drama film The Final Winter.

In March 2009, the Prime Minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd, gave an autographed copy of Keneally's Lincoln biography to President Barack Obama as a state gift.

Most recently Thomas Keneally featured as a writer in the critically acclaimed Australian drama, "Our Sunburnt Country".

Thomas Keneally's nephew Ben is married to the NSW Premier, Kristina Keneally.
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Books by Thomas Keneally

Average rating: 4.24 · 27,266 ratings · 862 reviews · 68 distinct works

	Schindler's List 4.30 avg rating — 25,082 ratings — published 1982 — 70 editions	My rating:
	The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith 3.41 avg rating — 235 ratings — published 1972 — 15 editions	My rating:
	Searching for Schindler 3.71 avg rating — 163 ratings — published 2007 — 8 editions	My rating:
	A Commonwealth of Thieves: The Improbable Birth of Australia 3.49 avg rating — 189 ratings — published 2005 — 13 editions	My rating:
	Abraham Lincoln 3.53 avg rating — 146 ratings — published 2002 — 11 editions	My rating:
	The Great Shame: And the Triumph of the Irish in the English-Speaking World 3.58 avg rating — 119 ratings — published 1997 — 9 editions	My rating:
	American Scoundrel: The Life of the Notorious Civil War General Dan Sickles 3.64 avg rating — 119 ratings — published 2002 — 11 editions	My rating:
	The Playmaker 3.63 avg rating — 100 ratings — published 1988 — 7 editions	My rating:
	Woman of the Inner Sea 3.58 avg rating — 91 ratings — published 2011 — 6 editions	My rating:
	Confederates 3.64 avg rating — 64 ratings — published 1979 — 10 editions	My rating:

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Quotes by Thomas Keneally

“Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire.”
― Thomas Keneally, Schindler's List

tags: humanity , life

47 people liked it

“Power is when we have every justification to kill, and we don't”
― Thomas Keneally

tags: schindlers-list

11 people liked it

“But then what is the alternative to trying to tell the truth about the Holocaust, the Famine, the Armenian genocide, the injustice of dispossession in the Americas and Australia? That everyone should be reduced to silence? To pretend that the Holocaust was the work merely of a well-armed minority who didn’t do as much harm as is claimed-and likewise, to argue that the Irish Famine was either an inevitability or the fault of the Irish-is to say that both were mere unreliable rumors, and not the great motors of history they so obviously proved to be. It suited me to think so at the time, but still I believe it to be true, that if there are going to be areas of history which are off-bounds, then in principle we are reduced to fudging, to cosmetic narrative. ”
― Thomas Keneally, Searching for Schindler

tags: history , holocaust , injustice

7 people liked it

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Topics Mentioning This Author

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The Next Best Boo...: OFFICIAL SPRING CHALLENGE - 2009	6462	7919	Jun 14, 2009 02:57pm

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