Thomas Keneally AO

Readers note: This is an excerpt from the 200 Treasures exhibition catalogue, developed in 2017. This content was written as a brief biography on why this person was included in the exhibition.

Thomas Keneally enjoys a prominent place as one of Australia’s best-loved and most prolific writers. His first novel, The Place at Whitton, was published in 1964. More than 40 novels, screenplays and books of memoirs and non-fiction have followed. Keneally, who has described himself as a ‘lefty troublemaker’, has tackled many thorny issues in his writing and lent his voice to the Republican Movement of the 1990s and other significant causes.

Keneally was born in Sydney to an Irish Catholic family. His earliest memories are of the NSW north coast towns of Kempsey, Taree and Wauchope, where he grew up in a politicised atmosphere suffused with questions of social justice. Catholicism was also a force in his youth. He entered the seminary as a young man but left before being ordained. He was working as a teacher when he began his writing career. In 1967 and 1968, he won the Miles Franklin award for Bring Larks and Heroes and Three Cheers for Paraclete. His 1972 book, The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, was another turning point in his career. It was the story of Aboriginal bushranger Jimmy Governor, inter-racial relationships and violence on the frontier. While Keneally has acknowledged elements of the book have dated, particularly his representations of Aboriginal people and culture, it was critically acclaimed and was the first of his works made into a film (directed by Fred Schepisi, it appeared in 1978).

Keneally’s greatest success was his 1982 novel Schindler’s Ark. It won the Booker Prize and was made into a feature film by Steven Spielberg. The film, Schindler’s List, won an Academy Award for best picture in 1994. While fiction has been Keneally’s predominant genre, recently he has turned to writing Australian history.