Thomas Keneally | |||
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Keneally at the premiere of the film Brave at the Sydney Film Festival, 11 June 2012
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Born | Thomas Michael Keneally 7 October 1935 Sydney, New South Wales, Australia |
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Occupation | Novelist | ||
Nationality | Australia | ||
Genre | Novels | ||
Notable awards | Booker Prize | ||
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Thomas Michael Keneally, AO (born 7 October 1935) is an Australian novelist, playwright, and essayist. 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.
Born in Sydney, Keneally grew up in Kempsey. He was educated at St Patrick's College, Strathfield. Subsequently, a writing prize there has been named after him. Keneally entered St Patrick's Seminary, Manly to train as a Catholic priest. Although he was ordained as a deacon while at the seminary, he left without being ordained to the priesthood. He worked as a Sydney schoolteacher before his success as a novelist and 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.