Thomas Keneally’s remarkable, Booker-winning historical fiction about the unlikely hero who rescued thousands of Jews from the Nazi death machine.
The Booker Prize 1982
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.
Watch the ceremony highlights
Winner The Booker Prize 1982
- By
- Thomas Keneally
- Published by
- Hodder & Stoughton
Thomas Keneally’s remarkable, Booker-winning historical fiction about the unlikely hero who rescued thousands of Jews from the Nazi death machine.
The Shortlist
John Arden recounts the extraordinary adventures of an ordinary man who gets embroiled in the expansionist activities of the Republic of Rome.
By John Arden
Set in a baking-hot East Africa during the First World War, William Boyd’s darkly comic debut novel illustrates the chaos and confusion of conflict.
By William Boyd
In the central volume of Lawrence Durrell's ‘quincunx’ - The Avignon Quintet - the party is over and the world is in the throes of the 1939-45 war.
A cat of alarming intelligence and an abundance of oddballs and outsiders inhabit Alice Thomas Ellis’ eccentric and charming fictional kingdom.
Timothy Mo’s deft portrayal of London’s Chinatown in the 1960s, where a thriving community lives by its own precise and violent rules.
By Timothy Mo
