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Thomas Keneally
The question posed by Thomas Keneally’s win was whether Schindler’s Ark was a proper work of fiction or an imaginative piece of non-fiction. Fiction said the judges, resoundingly.
The Australian novelist had already written 16 novels before he started on Schindler’s Ark – later renamed Schindler’s List. He had not intended to write the book but in 1980 went into a shop in Beverly Hills to buy a briefcase. The proprietor, Poldek Pfefferberg, was a Holocaust survivor and one of the Jews saved by the German industrialist Oskar Schindler.
On discovering that Keneally was a novelist, Pfefferberg persuaded him to write the book. Steven Spielberg’s film adaptation went on to win seven Oscars.
Winner The Booker Prize 1982
By Timothy Mo
By John Arden
By William Boyd