Thomas Keneally
Thomas Keneally
Thomas Michael Keneally, AOis 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...
NationalityAustralian
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth7 October 1935
CountryAustralia
arrived brother eight months people thus time wondering younger
My brother arrived some months after my father left. Um, and he ah, was thus eight years younger than me and it was um, you know, it was such a time that my mother probably had people wondering was it his.
asthma both frequently proper religion remember treatment
So I remember both medicine, because I frequently sick, particularly with asthma for which there was no proper treatment then, and in religion I had a strong sense of there being a patriarchy.
knew manage though ultimately
And so um, I knew that I really didn't want to be a priest and didn't want to be a celibate, though I could probably manage it. Um, and um, ultimately I left.
And I was very interested in the priesthood.
deprived felt further mother
But my mother felt very acutely having been deprived of further education. She felt it very acutely. So there were always books.
age chivalry church code golden good looked
If you look back to the golden age of the church and look at the code of chivalry, the code of chivalry looked pretty good to me, you know.
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Though, as he was torn into a pink upper air, she was a good craft to ride in, for her belly was firm and her breasts enabled a flying man good hold and emotions of heady safety. . . . Steering her peasant tits he bounded off stars.
church literature world
And I found both literature and the church very dramatic presences in the world of the 1950s.
believe dirty australia
And I liked pluralist Australia. I got a taste for pluralist Australia. I like, I like Australians and I can't believe that they're going to go to hell because they tell a good dirty joke, you know.
wisdom
I thought I'd definitely be a writer, whatever I did.
believe kids flesh
You know, so I was a weird eccentric kid but I did believe in the power of the word and of the word being made flesh I suppose, which again I suppose came from my temperament as well as my upbringing.
writing mind trying
And it is a folly to try to craft a novel for the screen, to write a novel with a screen contract in mind.
thinking design church
And I think my sexuality was heavily repressed by the church, by the, you know, the design of the mortal sins.
mystery cricket
I was never any good at cricket thought I love it as a, as a sort of mystery.