improbable illustrated commonwealth confederates

books:

4 reviews
Thomas Keneally

Angus and Robertson, 1972

Stark and powerful
This book tackles the tricky area of inter-racial violence bravely and with great skill. It paints a shocking picture of the Australia of 100 years ago, and particularly the plight of the aboriginal community. Keneally's economical style is perfectly suited to this dense narative; he makes every word count. One of the best books I've read this year.

Homebush boy

1 review
Thomas Keneally

William Heinemann Australia, 1995

"I was the sort of kid men took aside for serious talks."
Anyone who has ever enjoyed a novel by Thomas Keneally and wondered about his "inner man" will be richly rewarded by this perceptive, unpretentious, and often light-hearted memoir of life during his 17th year. The year 1952, was, he says, a "reckless, sweet, divinely hectic and subtly hormonal year...the most succulent and the most dangerous [year]," one which "lightly embarked on, [has] not to ...

The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith

2 reviews
Thomas Keneally

Bolinda Pub Inc, 1998

A startling insight into race, religion and the human spirit
Keneally's fictionalised account of the life of Aborigine Jimmy Blacksmith is a multi-layered masterpiece. His prose is fluid and deceptively simple as ever, but the subject is dark and dangerous. Probing the basic essence of racial identity, Kenneally reveals disturbing truths not confined to time or place. There are no heroes or villains in this sad story of loss and learning, but a sense of ...

Schindler's List - International Edition

1 review
Thomas Keneally

Touchstone, 1994

"He who saves a single life saves the whole world."
Thomas Keneally's Booker Prize-winning, fictionalized biography of Oskar Schindler memorializes a member of the Nazi party who endangered his own life for four years, working privately to save Jews from the death camps. A playboy who loved fine wines and foods, he was also a smooth-talking manipulator (and briber) of Nazi officials, as well as a clever entrepreneur, already on his way to stunning ...

The Tyrant's Novel

7 reviews
Thomas Keneally

Sceptre, 2004

Keneally in award-winning form with serious political novel.
In this novel within a novel, Australian author Thomas Keneally returns to the political themes which won him prizes for The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, Voices from the Forest, and Schindler's Ark. Keneally has always been at his best depicting ordinary people facing extraordinary pressures, especially from governments bent on totalitarian rule, and this contemporary allegory is no exception. ...

Schindler's Ark

3 reviews
Thomas Keneally

Sceptre, 2004

To the Righteous Among the Nations
This review is dedicated by a Jew and Zionist Until Death, myself! , To the Righteous among the Nations, those Gentiles who have stood by the Jewish Nation in times of travail and murder, and those who continue to stand by Jews and Israel, in these frightening and sombre times of today. Many people have wondered how the nation that gave us such great contributors to humanity, such as the ...

Playmaker

4 reviews
Thomas Keneally

Trafalgar Square, 1988

excellent writing highly recommended
I read this book seveal years ago, before Keneally's name became so widely known as a result of the success of Schindler's List (the movie). This book stands out in my memory for the great ability to transport us to a different time, place and way of thinking. I found it to have been very skillfully written. I subsequently read other books of his as a result of the pleasure derived from this ...

Schindler's Legacy: True Stories of the List Surviors [ILLUSTRATED]

6 reviews
Elinor J. Brecher

Dutton Adult, 1994

Oskar Schindler - Rake and Saviour
Oskar Schindler, one remarkable man who outwitted Adolf Hitler and the Nazis to save more Jews from the gas chambers than most of the heroic rescuers during WWII. Oskar Schindler was one of only a handful who surfaced from the chaos, and generations will remember him for what he did ... When asked, Schindler told that his metamorphosis during the war was sparked by the shocking immensity of ...

Voss

7 reviews
Patrick White

Penguin Classics, 2008

Voss: journeys of exploration
This novel opens in Sydney, 1845, with the German explorer Voss preparing to cross the Australian continent. This physical aspect of the novel is loosely based on the ill-fated expedition of Ludwig Leichhardt. Prior to leaving Sydney, Voss meets Laura Trevelyan. Laura is the niece of one of Voss's patrons and is perhaps the only person apart from Voss himself who perceives that his journey ...

Schindler's List

1 review
Thomas Keneally

Hodder & Stoughton Ltd, 1994

"He who saves a single life saves the whole world."
Thomas Keneally's Booker Prize-winning, fictionalized biography of Oskar Schindler memorializes a member of the Nazi party who endangered his own life for four years, working privately to save Jews from the death camps. A playboy who loved fine wines and foods, he was also a smooth-talking manipulator (and briber) of Nazi officials, as well as a clever entrepreneur, already on his way to stunning ...

Schindler's List

102 reviews
Thomas Keneally

Simon & Schuster, 1994

Phenomenal!
This book is horrendous, terrible, amazing, sympathetic, and heroic all at the same time. How humans can do this to each other is beyound me, and thankfully beyound most of us in this world. Simply breathtaking at times. Makes me really appreciate the freedoms we all share. Just read it, you won't be disappointed!

A Commonwealth of Thieves: The Improbable Birth of Australia

13 reviews
Thomas Keneally

Tantor Media, 2006

An Amazing Adventure Story
This account of the founding of the first English penal colony in Australia is also a view into other things, not least the state of English society in the late eighteenth century, one of the consequences of the Enclosure Act, and human triumph over fantastic adversity. It is very difficult for us to even imagine the hardships these people endured, from what seemed an arbitrary legal system, the ...

Abraham Lincoln

13 reviews
Thomas Keneally

Thorndike Press, 2003

Lincoln: "the bloodied nation incarnate"
This is one of several volumes in the Penguin Lives Series, each of which written by a distinguished author in her or his own right. Each provides a concise but remarkably comprehensive biography of its subject in combination with a penetrating analysis of the significance of that subject's life and career. I think this is a brilliant concept. Those who wish to learn more about the given subject ...

Strangers in Their Own Land

1 review
Peter Sichrovsky

I B Tauris & Co Ltd, 1986

A must-read!
At the time this book was published in 1987, there were about 35,000 Jews in Germany, most of whom were children of Holocaust survivors. (Today, there are also quite a few Eastern European Jews who came after the Berlin Wall came down). Later, when I myself visited Germany in 1997, I had many conversations similar to those in this book. "I'm proud to live with my family in Germany as a ...

Jacko the Great Intruder

4 reviews
Thomas Keneally

Trafalgar Square, 1995

These people all live[d]!
When this book finally reached North America, i urged my book discussion group to read it as a quality example of Australian writing. The reactions were nearly identical to those on this page - Jacko is a creep and the ending seems to drop you unfulfilled. Urging the group to reconsider the options Jacko faces on the last page against the character he's presented up to that point, the ...

Family Madness

3 reviews
Thomas Keneally

Hodder Stoughton Ltd(england, 1985

History reaches out to grab us . . .
The Second World War in Europe was considered a Great Crusade. The crusaders were largely single-minded in their approach to the conflict, particularly in political matters. The invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany brought that Communist coalition into a rickety accord with the Western Allies. Loosely calling the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics "Russia", the Allies lumped many ...

The Great Shame

19 reviews
Thomas Keneally

Chatto and Windus, 1998

The Irish Are survivors
Keneally's book will be a classic.He has captured the Irish Diaspora as none could do better.This is a huge story covering time,places, politics,love,hate,family,oppression,wars,peace;but through it all the determination of a race to survive. Keneally writes so well that he makes it seem that he was right there all the time and that you are travelling right along with him. Even the Irish ...

Confederates

13 reviews
Thomas Keneally

Collins, 1979

Fighting for the Cause?
Keneally uses the high point of the Southron Confederacy as the setting for this brilliant historical novel. Reaching through the ranks, he selects a Shenandoah Valley private and his mates - "confederates" - to reveal the horrors of war with vivid reality. Usaph Bumpass moves with Stonewall Jackson's Virginians through the Valley and into the first Confederate invasion of the North. Through ...

Gossip from the forest

4 reviews
Thomas Keneally

Collins, 1975

Incredible Story Telling!
As a historical based novel, this is great story telling. Keneally's writing style is taut, which helps this book maintain a consistent tension from page 1 till the end. I found it easy to paint pictures in my head of the various scenes he set with his words: the cold, the damp, the dark, the despair, the futility, and especially the feeling of limbo as they crossed no man's land between ...

A River Town

3 reviews
Thomas Keneally

Sceptre, 1995

wonderful
Any work by Thomas Keneally is a treasure trove of human emotion and character in the most diverse of locations. He has written no 2 books alike= from tackling the civil war in "Conferedates", to the Booker-prize winning "Schindler's List" (he is the uncredited author and discoverer of this amazing tale, though America tends to credit Steven Spielberg erroneously), to modern drama in "Woman of ...

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