Most Popular Books by Thomas Keneally

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 new non-fiction book recounting the 19th century history of Ireland. The book traces the three causes of the halving of the Irish population in that century: the famine, the Irish emigrations to American and Canada, and the transportation of political activitists to Australia. It is a quest for the author''s Irish ancestors.

In Australia in 1787, Lieutenant Ralph Clerk is assigned to direct a play featuring a cast of prisoners he is there to supervise.

A powerful novel of America’s Civil War told through the voices of Confederate soldiers, turncoats, and Stonewall Jackson in the weeks leading up to the great slaughter at Antietam In the summer of 1862, as the Civil War rages on, a ragtag Confederate army consisting of young boys and old men, storekeepers, farmers, and teachers, gathers in Virginia under the leadership of Tom “Stonewall” Jackson, ready to follow their sainted commander to glory—or hell. One of these men, Usaph Bumpass left his wife, Ephie, behind to join the Shenandoah Volunteers, only to discover Ephie’s lover, Decatur Cate, among his comrades. Still, Usaph remains steadfast in his devotion to a cause he does not fully understand, even as troubling memories of home invade his mind on the march north. But a dark destiny awaits brilliant military strategist Jackson and his Southern boys, as hard truths about war, loyalty, love, life, and death are revealed in the fires and bloodshed at Antietam. A breathtaking work of historical fiction that captures the human face of war as few novels have done before, Confederates has been compared to Tolstoy’s epic War and Peace as an artful, honest, and profoundly moving depiction of the lot of the soldier. Shortlisted for Great Britain’s prestigious Man Booker Prize, this masterful tale of love, duty, and conflict from author of Schindler’s List Thomas Keneally is an enduring and unforgettable classic of Civil War literature.

This is the captivating story behind Schindler’s List, the Booker Prize–winning book and the Academy Award–winning Spielberg film. 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. Thomas 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. Charming, charismatic, and persistent, he convinced Keneally to relate the incredible story of “the all-drinking, all-screwing, all-black-marketeering Nazi, Oskar Schindler. But to me he was Jesus Christ.” Searching for Schindler is the engrossing chronicle of Keneally’s pursuit of one of history’s most fascinating and paradoxical heroes. Traveling throughout the United States, Germany, Israel, Poland, and Austria, Keneally and Poldek interviewed people who had known Schindler and uncovered their indelible memories of the Holocaust. Keneally’s powerful narrative rose quickly to the top of bestseller lists. Steven Spielberg’s magnificent film adaptation went on to fulfill Poldek’s dream of winning “an Oscar for Oskar.” (Keneally’s anecdotes about Spielberg, Liam Neeson, Ben Kingsley, and other cast members will delight film buffs.) Written with candor and humor, Seaching for Schindler is an intimate look at Keneally’s growth as a writer and the enormous success of his portrait of Oskar Schindler.

In this spirited history of the remarkable first four years of the convict settlement of Australia, Thomas Keneally offers us a human view of a fascinating piece of history. Combining the authority of a renowned historian with a brilliant narrative flair, Keneally gives us an inside view of this unprecedented experiment from the perspective of the new colony’s governor, Arthur Phillips. Using personal journals and documents, Keneally re-creates the hellish overseas voyage and the challenges Phillips faced upon arrival: unruly convicts, disgruntled officers, bewildered and hostile natives, food shortages, and disease. He also offers captivating portrayals of Aborigines and of convict settlers who were determined to begin their lives anew. A Commonwealth of Thieves immerses us in the fledgling penal colony and conjures up the thrills and hardships of those first four improbable years.

Austin North sees himself as a fine English teacher in his local high school. His students respect him, and he finds personal fulfillment in teaching them the power of poetry to move and inspire. However, Austin''s self-perceptions are upset by his infatuation with a young Sudanese girl, a recent immigrant to Australia. When Austin realises that he is just another predator in her difficult journey, he is forced to re-examine his own values and relationships.

The fatal and desperate politics of Eastern Europe collide with the comparative innocence and complacency of suburban Australian life in this powerful and disturbing love story about two families and the madness that invades their lives. Terry Delaney''s comfortable life is upset when he falls in love with Danielle Kabbel, daughter of charismatic emigre Rudi Kabbel, and succumbs to Rudi''s obsessive visions of approaching doom.

The past returns to haunt a guilt-stricken man who survived a tragic Antarctic expedition in this novel from the author of Schindler’s List. A professor at an Australian university, Alec Ramsey has lived an eventful life, much of which he is reluctant to discuss. In the 1920s, he was a member of a small expedition to Antarctica that resulted in the tragic death of its leader and Ramsey’s dear friend, Stephen Leeming. Four decades later, Ramsey has yet to make peace with himself over two things: He had slept with Leeming’s wife just prior to their embarkation, and his friend had still been alive when Ramsey left him behind on the ice at the bottom of the world. Closemouthed avoidance has enabled Ramsey to go on with his life in academia, despite the “betrayal obsessions” that have become an integral part of his being, even though what he so vividly recalls may or may not be the truth. But now there will be no silencing Ramsey’s inner demons—because, after forty years frozen in the Antarctic, Leeming’s body has finally been found. An enthralling, profoundly affecting novel of guilt, perception, and endurance, The Survivor is a gripping story from award-winning author Thomas Keneally. Intriguing and intelligent, it is a masterful fictional journey through the complex labyrinth of the human heart and psyche.

The ideal concise biography of an American icon- now available in paperback for the bicentennial of his birth The self -mad e man from a log cabin, the great orator, the Emancipator, the Savior of the Union, the martyr-Lincoln''s story is at the very heart of American history. But who was he, really? In this outstanding biography, award-winning author Thomas Keneally follows Lincoln from his impoverished birth through his education and presidency. From the development of his political philosophy to his troubled family life and his actions during the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln is an incisive study of a turning point in our history and a revealing portrait of a pivotal figure.

Historical fiction about a man and the Jews he saved from the Holocaust in Poland.

Booker Prize Finalist: A “gripping” novel of the World War I armistice negotiations that set the stage for World War II, by the author of Schindler’s List (The Guardian). In November 1918, after four long years of murderous conflict, six men gather in a railroad car in a secluded forest outside Paris, France, to negotiate an end to World War I. A pacifist, left-leaning diplomat with no military knowledge or experience, Matthias Erzberger has been selected by the German high command to represent their surrendering nation, for reasons as baffling to him as to anyone. He is joined by France’s aging, vindictive Marshal Foch and Britain’s unbending Admiral Wemyss in an attempt to bring peace to a war-torn world. In these claustrophobic quarters the future is to be decided by men driven by ego, prejudice, fear, exhaustion, vengeance, delusion, and, in Erzberger’s case, conscience. But the well-meaning diplomat’s futile efforts to secure lenient surrender terms will have devastating consequences for Europe, the Fatherland, and Erzberger himself. Renowned for his enthralling fictional accounts of historical events, award-winning author of Schindler’s List Thomas Keneally once again brings the heart-stopping human drama of history to life, as he brilliantly envisions the earth-shattering events that transpired in the forest of Compiègne, setting the stage for the Treaty of Versailles and the rise of the Third Reich.

When Grace married the handsome and worldly Captain Leo Waterhouse in Australia during the middle of the Second World War, she never doubted that she had married a hero and he would come back to her unscathed. But Leo never returns from a commando raid on Japanese ships in the Singapore Harbour, leaving Grace a widow, like so many, to shoulder the pain and regret of losing her husband. Sixty years later, Grace is still bitter and perplexed by the tragic death of the love of her life when the true story of the abortive mission comes to light. As Leo’s diary during captivity, scrawled on toilet paper, and new fragments of the events emerge, Grace must confront her doubts about her hero and his ultimate betrayal.

Thomas Keneally presents this lively history of the ''First Fleet'' which took convicts from Britain to Australia in 1787. He also tells the story of the early years of Sydney, which was founded as ''an open-air prison'', and the colonization of New South Wales.

Woman of the Inner Sea is Thomas Keneally’s strongest, most compelling work since his Booker Prize-winning Schindler’s List. Like that book, the story of Woman of the Inner Sea arises from a true incident, and once more the imagining of it is utterly convincing. Kate Gaffney-Kozinski, an attractive, well educated woman, has gone on “walkabout” to the inner reaches of the Australian outback. Fleeing her wealthy husband, Paul Kozinski, and his unscrupulous clan, Kate is trying to obliterate herself and the grief that haunts her. At first we do not understand its source, but as the story unfolds a kind of mystery evolves around the tragic loss of her two children. In a small town she tries to change herself into a different woman, seeking the companionship and protection of a reticent but rough local man, an explosives expert known as Jelly. But the violence of the west country’s unpredictable weather forces her on and soon she must confront her husband. No one knows Australian society better than Thomas Keneally, who offers here a rich cross-section of his people: from Kate’s prominent father to her controversial uncle, a renegade priest; from the grasping Kozinskis who rule Sydney’s construction business to colorful small-town men like Jelly and his friend Gus, who travels with a kangaroo and emu he has rescued from an entertainment park. And at the center of this panorama stands Kate, a passionate woman of great integrity caught in a nightmare of grief and deception. Woman of the Inner Sea, with its evocation of the heroic in the midst of disaster and evil, will be remembered as one of Thomas Keneally’s best works.

Set in a remote British penal colony in the late eighteenth century, Bring Larks and Heroes explores the early years of European settlement of desperate men and corrupt soldiers to Australia, the world’s end. Corporal Phelim Halloran, an honest man, poet and lover, attempts to make a home for himself while confronting the demands of his secret bride, a convict-artist, his Irish comrades, and his own conscience. Can he overcome the hellish, sun-parched landscape to believe in something greater than his own existence?

Thomas Keneally, the bestselling author of The Daughters of Mars and Schindler’s List, brings his “insightful and nimble prose” (The New York Times Book Review) to this exquisite exploration of community and country, love and morality, set 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).

An Edwardian murder mystery set on the unforgiving Antarctic tundra . . . Captain Sir Eugene Stewart chose the gentlemen to join his great 1910 expedition to the South Pole with great precision, each man selected for his skills to survive the Antarctic winter. Reflecting sixty years later, Sir Anthony Piers, an oil painter and watercolorist chosen to capture the long midnight lights of the South Pole, finally reveals the truth of the New British South Polar Expedition and the murder committed on their journey. Who among the expedition would kill Victor Henneker, an unlikeable and mischievous journalist only six months into the trek? Telling of complete isolation, absolute darkness, unrelenting wind, and slowly-approaching starvation, Sir Anthony Piers confronts the demons and truths of this hellish expedition after sixty years of silence.

This book is an attempt at fiction. There are none the less references to Eritrean events of 1987 and early 1988, though these have sometimes been compressed or relocated for fiction''s sake. Thomas Keneally who, to research this tale, visited Eritrea under the protection of the Eritrean rebels -- memorably charts the experience of a group of travellers through the eyes of one of their own.

A revised version of the author''s novel The Fear, this is a portrait of urban Australia during World War II. It is the story of Daniel Jordan, a boy growing up in a working-class neighbourhood. The author also wrote Schindler''s Ark and Flying Hero Class.

***Winner of the Booker Prize*** ''ONE OF THE WORLD''S GREATEST WRITERS'' Spectator ''Extraordinary'' Graham Greene ''Powerful'' The Times ''Marvellous'' Sunday Times The acclaimed bestselling classic of Holocaust literature, adapted into the award-winning film Schindler''s List In the shadow of Auschwitz, as thousands faced death in Nazi-occupied Poland, an unlikely saviour emerged. Oskar Schindler was a heavy-drinking, womanising industrialist who defied and outwitted the SS to save more Jews from the gas chambers than any other single person during World War II. Based on a true story, Schindler''s Ark is an astonishing tale of huge risks and great courage in the face of unspeakable evil. PRAISE FOR THOMAS KENEALLY ''A superb storyteller'' Alan Sillitoe ''One of the historical novel''s most expert practitioners'' Guardian ''A grand talent'' The Times

A young Catholic priest, Father Maitland raises eyebrows among the brothers of St. Peter’s the moment his young cousin and new bride spend the night in his room. But even when he’s trying to do the right thing, Father Maitland continuously finds himself at odds with his superiors and the strictures of the Church—a conflict that threatens to unravel his faith and his life. A fastidious and darkly satirical novel, with moments of warm humor, Three Cheers for the Paraclete won Thomas Keneally his second Miles Franklin Award.

Artem Samsurov, an ardent follower of Lenin and a hero of the rebellion, flees his Siberian labor camp for the sanctuary of Brisbane, Australia in 1911. Failing to find the worker’s paradise and brotherhood he imagined, Artem quickly joins the agitation for a general strike among the growing trade union movement. He finds a fellow spirit in a dangerously attractive female lawyer and becomes entangled in the death of another Tsarist exile. But, Atrem can’t overcome the corruption, repression, and injustice of the conservative Brisbane. When he returns to Russia in 1917 for the Red October, will his beliefs stand? Based on the true story of Artem Sergeiv, a Russian immigrant in Australia who would play a vital role in the Russian Revolution, The People’s Train explores the hearts of the men and women who fueled, compromised, and passionately fought for their ideals.

"From the bestselling author of Schindler''s List and The Daughters of Mars, a new historical novel set on the remote island of Saint Helena about the remarkable friendship between a young woman and one of history''s most intriguing figures, Napoleon Bonaparte, during the final years of his life in exile. In October 1815, after losing the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon Bonaparte was banished to the island of Saint Helena. There, in one of the most remote places on earth, he lived out the final six years of his life. On this lonely island with no chance of escape, he found an unexpected ally: a spirited British girl named Betsy Balcombe who lived on the island with her family. While Napoleon waited for his own accommodations to be built, the Balcombe family played host to the infamous exile, a decision that would have devastating consequences for them all. In Napoleon''s Last Island, "master of character development and period detail" (Kirkus Reviews) Thomas Keneally recreates Betsy''s powerful and complex friendship with the man dubbed The Great Ogre, her enmities and alliances with his remaining courtiers, and her dramatic coming-of-age. Bringing a shadowy period of history to life with a brilliant attention to detail, Keneally tells the untold story of one of Europe''s most enigmatic, charismatic, and important figures, and the ordinary British family who dared to forge a connection with him"--

In 1915, two spirited Australian sisters join the war effort as nurses, escaping the confines of their father''s dairy farm and carrying a guilty secret with them. Used to tending the sick as they are, nothing could have prepared them for what they confront, first in the Dardanelles, then on the Western Front. Yet they find courage in the face of extreme danger and become the friends they never were before. And eventually they meet the kind of men worth giving up their precious independence for - if only they all survive. At once epic in scope and extraordinarily intimate, The Daughters of Mars brings the First World War to vivid life from an unusual perspective. Profoundly moving, it pays tribute to the men and women who voluntarily risked their lives for peace.

Hero, adulterer, bon vivant, murderer and rogue, Dan Sickles led the kind of existence that was indeed stranger than fiction. Throughout his life he exhibited the kind of exuberant charm and lack of scruple that wins friends, seduces women, and gets people killed. In American Scoundrel Thomas Keneally, the acclaimed author of Schindler’s List, creates a biography that is as lively and engrossing as its subject. Dan Sickles was a member of Congress, led a controversial charge at Gettysburg, and had an affair with the deposed Queen of Spain—among many other women. But the most startling of his many exploits was his murder of Philip Barton Key (son of Francis Scott Key), the lover of his long-suffering and neglected wife, Teresa. The affair, the crime, and the trial contained all the ingredients of melodrama needed to ensure that it was the scandal of the age. At the trial’s end, Sickles was acquitted and hardly chastened. His life, in which outrage and accomplishment had equal force, is a compelling American tale, told with the skill of a master narrative.

Following a lifetime observing Australia and its people, Tom Keneally turns inwards to reflect on what has been important to him. ''When I was born in 1935 I grew up, despite the Depression and World War II, with a primitive sense of being fortunate . . . The utopian strain was very strong . . . if we weren''t to be a better society, if we were simply serfs designed to support a system of privilege, what was the bloody point?'' Thomas Keneally has been observing, reflecting on and writing about Australia and the human condition for well over fifty years. In this deeply personal, passionately drawn and richly tuned collection he draws on a lifetime of engagement with the great issues of our recent history and his own moments of discovery and understanding. He writes with unbounded joy of being a grandparent, and with intimacy and insight about the prospect of death and the meaning of faith. He is outraged about the treatment of Indigenous Australians and refugees, and argues fiercely against market economics and the cowardice of climate change deniers. And he introduces us to some of the people, both great and small, who have dappled his life. Beautifully written, erudite and at times slyly funny, A Bloody Good Rant is an invitation to share the deep humanity of a truly great Australian. Praise for Australians: ''No doubt about it, Australians is a corker.'' - Cassandra Pybus, Weekend Australian ''. . . the story of Australia and the Australians could be in no better hands than Keneally''s.'' - West Australian ''Keneally evokes these distant lives with concrete detail and vivid sympathy . . . his people inhabit the same world we do - we meet them without the hesitation of reaching across voids of space and time. - Sydney Morning Herald ''[Australians] will appeal to the general reader and the avid historian alike, and this is only the first volume. This reader can''t wait for the second.'' - Bookseller + Publisher

The final novel in a fast-paced and gripping historical crime trilogy from the legendary Thomas Keneally and his eldest daughter, Meg Keneally. Set in 1825 during Australia''s colonial period at the notorious Port Macquarie penal colony, The Power Game is the thrilling conclusion to the whip-smart mystery series from the "greatest living practitioner of historical fiction" (Christian Science Monitor).

Chronicles the people and landscape of the American Southwest, and profiles the characters, past and present, who have played a key role in its history.

The award-winning author of modern classics such as Schindler’s List and Napoleon’s Last Island is at his triumphant best with this “engrossing and transporting” (Financial Times) novel about the adventures of Charles Dickens’s son in the Australian Outback during the 1860s. Edward Dickens, the tenth child of England’s most famous author Charles Dickens, has consistently let his parents down. 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 fail out of the public eye. He soon finds himself in the remote Outback, surrounded by Aboriginals, colonials, ex-convicts, ex-soldiers, and very few women. 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 livestock, bushrangers, shifty stock agents, and frontier battles. By reimagining the tale of a fascinating yet little-known figure in history, this “roguishly tender coming-of-age story” (Booklist) offers penetrating insights into Colonialism and the fate of Australia’s indigenous people, and a wonderfully intimate portrait of Charles Dickens, as seen through the eyes of his son.

From the Booker Prize-winning, #1 international bestselling author of Schindler’s List comes a brilliantly imagined novel reminiscent of Fahrenheit 451—a story of a celebrated novelist caught between the demands of his government and his impulse to run for his life. Thomas Keneally’s literary achievements have been inspired by some of history’s most intriguing events and characters, but in a rare reversal of time his brilliantly imagined new novel takes us into a near future that uncannily is all too familiar. In a detention camp where he is neither granted asylum nor readied to be sent back to his native land, a detainee bides his time. He insists on being called Alan Sheriff, a westernization of his given name; he was born in a country that had once been a friend to the United States but is now its enemy. Little else is known about Sheriff until a writer comes to interview him. Sheriff decides that the time is right to tell his visitor his story and embarks on the unraveling of events that have led to his current state with extraordinary detail—the basis of which forms this novel within a novel. Sheriff is a celebrated novelist in a country in which its brutal leader orders Sheriff to ghostwrite a work of fiction: an uneasy combination of invention, autobiography, and polemic—the very publication of which would overturn Western sanctions and shame the United States. The deadline is impossible, but the government enforcers guard his house and stalk his every move. It is not long before Sheriff becomes the tyrant’s caged canary, as he races against the deadline that threatens to cost him everything and everyone he holds dear. Provocative and possibly prophetic, The Tyrant’s Novel is a literary achievement inspired by recent history’s most intriguing events and characters. Here, Keneally once more combines, as he did in Schindler''s List, his fictional talent with his engagement in world politics.

Fleeing to Australia to escape the repressive life of British-controlled Ireland, Tim Shea is alarmed by his new home''s equally stifling social order and its inclination towards prejudice. By the author of Schindler''s List.

A brilliant recreation of the first four years of white settlement in Australia by Booker Prize-winning author Tom Keneally. In 1787, Britain banished its unwanted citizens - uneducated petty thieves, streetwalkers, orphan chimneysweeps and dashing highwaymen - to the fringes of the known world. So remote was Botany Bay - the destination to which the overcrowded, disease-ridden convict ships were bound - that only one European expedition had ever before anchored there. Yet the rejects of Britain, accompanied only by a flimsy complement of soldiers, marines and officers, were expected to start a settlement and flourish. It was an audacious social experiment, unparalleled before or since. To the indigenous inhabitants, the white men came as ghosts through cracks in the cosmos, rudely seizing the bounty of land and sea. On the swampy shores of Botany Bay, and by the sandstone coves of Sydney Harbour, the clash of civilisations was ineviteable, intense and often tragic. From this improbable beginning, through famine, drought, escapes and floggings, the glory of modern Sydney was born. Britain''s penal experiment succeeded against all odds. Impeccably researched and told in the inimitable Keneally style, The Commonwealth of Thievesis the compelling tale of a nation''s beginning, its unforgettable people and their quest for identity.