Tento australský autor mistrně propojuje historii a fikci, přičemž jeho díla často čerpají z minulých událostí a oživují je moderní psychologií a stylem. Jeho jedinečný přístup k vyprávění spočívá v přepracovávání historických materiálů a zasazování je do současného kontextu. Hluboký zájem o lidské osudy a etické dilemata se odráží v jeho oceňovaných románech. Autorův nezaměnitelný hlas a literární hloubka činí jeho knihy poutavým čtením pro všechny milovníky historie a silných příběhů.
Strhující a proslulé románové zpracování osudů Oskara Schindlera – bezohledného kariéristy, válečného zbohatlíka, milovníka elegance, přepychu, alkoholu a krásných žen, jenž ve stínu osvětimských komínů našel svoji lidskost a riskoval nejen majetek, ale i vlastní život, aby nedopustil vyvraždění tisícovky „svých židů“. Román sugestivně líčí vývoj a střety individualit – obětí, pasivních účastníků a iniciativních vykonavatelů – zapojených do obrovité byrokratické mašinerie zla. Steven Spielberg použil motivy románu pro natočení slavného stejnojmenného filmu...
From the award-winning author of "To Asmara" comes a riveting and richly-textured tale of magic, terrorism, the loss of dreams, and the extraordinary powers of the human spirit. After terrorists hijack his plane, a dance troupe manager is transformed into a hero.
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.
"SEARCHING FOR SCHINDLER is very much Tom's journey, he reflects on his early days as a writer with quite a bit of success - but no confidence - and how this book, the people he met, and the film it became, changed his life. From his Sydney home, he tracked down the main player's in Poldek and Schindler's story. Tom and Poldek travelled across the US, Germany, Israel, Austria and Poland interviewing survivors and discovering extraordinary stories. SCHINDLER'S ARK took a huge toll on Tom, and his family, he had never been so overwhelmed by the writing of a story. It forced him to think about Australians and their attitudes to the Holocaust, to think about the Israel / Palestine situation and about families. Not ready to give up the story of Schindler and his Jews after the enormous success of the book, Tom is there for the film adaptation and on set for the filming. Filled with stories of Steven Spielberg, Liam Neeson, Ben Kingsley, Ralph Fiennes and many other well-known and strong characters SEARCHING FOR SCHINDLER gives Tom Keneally scope to show the wonderful, warm, thinking, compassionate and very funny man that he is."--Publisher's website
Annotation In the third volume of Thomas Keneally's unique history of Australia - where he shines a light on the lives and deeds of our countrymen and women, both known and unknown - he takes up the story at the end of the Great War and explores our development as a nation during the tumultuous 20th century.
The story of modern Australia begins in eighteenth-century Britain, where
people were hanged for petty offences but crime was rife, and the gaols were
bursting.
Married to the scion of a New South Wales construction empire, Kate endures her husband's infidelities, but when tragedy strikes, she disappears into the outback and begins an adventure. By the author of Schindler's List.
Bestselling author Thomas Keneally brings to life the vast range of characters
who have formed our national story, in the second volume of a unique history
of Australia.
When an affluent Kempsey matron spots a young Aboriginal boy who bears an uncanny resemblance to her husband, not only does she scream for divorce, attempt to take control of the child's future and upend her comfortable life, but the whole town seems drawn into chaos. A hero of the First World War has a fit at the cinema and is taken to a psychiatric ward in Sydney, his Irish farmhand is murdered, and a gay piano-playing veteran, quietly a friend to many in town, is implicated.Corporal Hitler's Pistol speaks to the never-ending war that began with 'the war to end all wars'. Rural communities have always been a melting pot and many are happy to accept a diverse bunch ... as long as they don't overstep. Set in a town he knows very well, in this novel Tom Keneally tells a compelling story of the interactions and relationships between black and white Australians in early twentieth-century Australia
Booker Prize winner Thomas Keneally transports us into the life of John
Mitchel, one of the most controversial figures of the fight for Irish
independence.Bringing us on a vivid, page-turning odyssey from Mitchel's
revolutionary origins in the depths of the Great Famine, through exile and a
troubling political evolution, the master of historical fiction wrestles with
the conflicts at the centre of a complicated legacy.'One of the world's
greatest writers.' Spectator'Enlightening . . . Keneally's descriptive gift
comes into exquisite play.' TLS'A gripping and resonant story.' Financial
Times
Most people know little more about the US President Abraham Lincoln than how he met his end - assassinated in a theatre box by a gunman. But as Thomas Keneally, Booker prizewinning novelist for Schindler's Ark, shows in this short, but enthralling life that Lincoln's origins, his early life, his self-taught lawyer's career and how he became a politician and ultimately US president, is an epitome of the American dream. If Lincoln - without any benefits of class, wealth or contacts - could reach the pinnacle of US life then so might anyone else. Keneally has long been absorbed by Lincoln's life and letters, upon which he draws for his biography.
"On the edge of a small town in New South Wales, far from the battlefields of the Second World War, lies a prisoner-of-war camp housing Italian, Korean and Japanese soldiers. For their guards and the locals, many with loved ones away fighting, captive or dead, it is hard to know how to treat them - with disdain, hatred or compassion? Alice, a young woman leading a dull life on her father-in-law's farm, is one of those with a husband held prisoner in Europe. When Giancarlo, an Italian POW and anarchist, is assigned to work on the farm, she hopes that being kind to him will somehow influence her husband's treatment. What she doesn't anticipate is how dramatically Giancarlo will expand her outlook and self-knowledge. But what most challenges Alice and the town is the foreignness of the Japanese inmates and their culture, which the camp commanders fatally misread. Mortified by being taken alive, they plan an outbreak, to shattering and far-reaching effect." - Sunday Telegraph.
Set in Sydney Cove, 200 years ago, an upright man is in charge of staging a play and, in so doing, helping convicts to reform. As his involvement with the play and his love for the lead actress grows, his hitherto strong resolutions and moral principles are severely put to the test.
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. As he tries to survive between two cultures, 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.
Australia 1789. A young married lieutenant is directing rehearsals of the first play ever to be staged in that country. With only two copies of the text, a cast of convicts, and one leading lady who may be about to be hanged, conditions are hardly ideal. . . "Wertenbaker has searched history and found in it a humanistic lesson for hard modern times: rough, sombre, undogmatic and warm" (Sunday Times); "Highly theatrical, often funny and at times dark and disturbing, it sets an infant civilization on the stage with clarity, economy and insight" (Charles Spencer, Daily Telegraph)
"In 1915, two spirited Australian sisters join the war effort as nurses, longing for new horizons. Nothing could have prepared them for the carnage they confront in the Old World, 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 survive"--Page 4 of cover.
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.
Written by the author of Schindler's Ark, Flying Hero Class, The Playmaker and The Place Where Sold are Born, this novel captures the contrast between American and Australian culture today through the exploits of one Jacko Emptor.
Román Thomasa Keneallyho Schindlerov zoznam (1986) vznikol na základe skutočného príbehu nemeckého továrnika, obchodníka a šéfa pracovného tábora Oskara Schindlera, ktorý počas druhej svetovej vojny zachránil pred plynovými komorami vyše tisíc Židov. Keneally v ňom vychádza zo skutočných výpovedí očitých svedkov, tzv. Schindlerjuden – Schindlerových Židov, a brilantným rozprávačským štýlom podáva presvedčivý portrét dobrého muža, ktorý si svoju ľudskosť zachoval aj v časoch, keď ju iní stratili.
23. júla roku 1900 v austrálskej osade Breelong neďaleko Gilgandry v Novom Južnom Walese domorodec zvaný Jimmy Governor začal vykonávať pomstu za krivdy, ktoré na ňom spáchali belošskí zamestnávatelia, a podľa výpovedí niektorých svedkov aj za urážky a poníženia, ktoré si musela vytrpieť jeho biela žena. Spisovateľ Thomas Keneally sa inšpiroval touto udalosťou a podal otrasné svedectvo o bezohľadnom sebectve a ľahostajnosti bielych prisťahovalcov aj o slepej a v podstate bezmocnej zúrivosti, s akou so ojedinelí domorodci pokúšali čeliť nespravodlivosti. Tragédiou Jimmieho Blacksmitha je, že uveril v ideály belošskej spoločnosti a chcel sa do nej začleniť. Jimmieho úsilie sa však celkom zákonite končí rozčarovaním, ale Jimmie na rozdiel od väčšiny svojich súkmeňovcov neprijíma neúspech a krivdy s trpnou odovzdanosťou. Keď sa miera jeho trpezlivosti naplní, v spravodlivom rozhorčení vyhlási bielym gazdom vojnu a neľútostne, kruto sa odpláca, až kým ho spoločnosť, ktorá svo jou sociálnou nerovnosťou a pokryteckou morálkou celé zlo vyvolala, nechytí a nepotresce
