Thomas Keneally Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Publication Order of Australians Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

Thomas Keneally
Thomas Keneally was born October 7, 1935 in Sydney, Australia. His parents, Edmund Thomas Keneally and Elsie Margaret Coyle were born to Irish dads in the dairy and timber town of Kempsey, New South Wales, and even though he was born in Sydney, his early years were spent in Kempsey.

By 1942, the family had moved to 7 Loftus Crescent, Homebush, a suburb in the inner west of Sydney and Thomas enrolled at Christian Brothers St. Patrick’s College, Strathfield. Right after, his brother John was born. Keneally studied Honors English for his Leaving Certificate in the year 1952, under Brother James Athanasius McGlade, and won a Commonwealth scholarship.

Thomas entered St. Patrick’s Seminary, Manly, in order to train as a Catholic priest. Even though he was ordained as a deacon while he was at the seminary, after six years there he left in depression and without getting ordained to the priesthood. He worked as a Sydney schoolteacher before he gained success as a novelist and was a lecturer at the University of New England from 1968 until 1970.

He wrote “Schindler’s Ark” after having been inspired by Poldek Pfefferberg’s efforts. In 1980, he met Pfefferberg, a Holocaust survivor, in the latter’s shop, and learning that he was an author, Poldek showed him all the extensive files he had on Schindler, including the list itself. Poldek became an advisor on the book, and together they traveled to Poland to see the sites associated with this story.

He is best known for his non-fiction novel called “Schindler’s Ark”, which won the Booker Prize in 1982, and in 1993 was adapted into “Schindler’s List” by Steven Spielberg, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture.

“The Devil’s Playground” and “The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith” were each adapted into movies in the 1970s, both of which Thomas cameos in.

He began his writing career in 1964 with his first story being published in The Bulletin under the pen name Bernard Coyle, and has published numerous novels in that time. Many of his novels are reworkings of historical material, even though they are modern in their style and psychology.

Other prominent novels include “Gossip From the Forest”, “The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith”, and “Confederates”, each of which was shortlist for the Booker Prize. “The Daughters of Mars” was shortlisted for the 2013 Walter Scott Prize. He won the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards’ Special Award in 2008.

In 1965, he married Judy Martin, who was a nurse at the time, and they had two daughters, named Janet and Margaret.

“Schindler’s Ark” is a stand alone novel and was released in 1982. In Auschwitz’s shadow, one flamboyant German industrialist grew into a living legend to all the Jews in Cracow. He was a heavy drinker, a womanizer, and a bon viveur, however to them he was their savior.

This is the extraordinary tale of Oskar Schindler, a man that risked his life to protect the Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland and who became transformed by the war into a guy with a mission, a compassionate angel of mercy.

“Shame and the Captives” is a stand alone novel and was released in 2014. The drastic true events of the night over a hundred Japanese POWs staged the biggest and bloodiest prison escape of World War II.

Alice lives on her father-in-law’s farm right on the edge of an Australian country town, as her husband is being held captive in Europe. When Giancarlo, an Italian inmate at the prisoner-of-war camp just down the road, gets assigned to work on the farm, she is hoping that being kind to this man is going to influence her husband’s treatment somehow. What she never anticipated is just how dramatically Giancarlo is going to change her understanding both of the wider world and herself.

What challenges her the most as well as her fellow townsfolk is the utter foreignness of the thousand-plus Japanese inmates and their deeply held code of honor, which the camp commanders are fatally misread. Mortified by getting taken alive in battle and just preferring a violent death to the shame of living, the Japanese prisoners are playing an outbreak with far-reaching and shattering repercussions for all of the citizens around them.

“Napoleon’s Last Island” is a stand alone novel and was released in 2016. A novel about the friendship between one of history’s most intriguing figures (Napoleon Bonaparte) and a quick-witted young lady, during his final years in exile on St. Helena.

In October 1815, after Napoleon lost the Battle of Waterloo, he is banished to the island of St. Helena. While here, in one of the most isolated places on the planet, he lived out his final six years. On this lonely island without any opportunity to escape, he found one unexpected ally: Betsy Balcombe, who is a spirited British girl that lived on the island with the rest of her family.

As Napoleon waited for accommodations of his own to be constructed, the Balcombe family played host to this infamous exile, a choice which would wind up having devastating consequences for every single one of them.

Thomas recreates Betsy’s own powerful and complicated friendship with the man called The Great Ogre, her alliances and enmities with his remaining courtiers, and her dramatic coming-of-age. Bringing this shadowy bit of history to life with this brilliant attention to detail, Keneally tells this untold tale of one of Europe’s most charismatic, enigmatic, and important figures, and the typical British family that dared to forge a connection with him.

“The Dickens Boy” is a stand alone novel and was released in 2020. A vibrant novel about Charles Dickens’ son and his little-known adventures in the Australian Outback.

In 1868, Charles Dickens sends his youngest kid, Edward (age sixteen), to Australia. Posted to this remote sheep station located in New South Wales, he finds that his dad’s fame reaches even there, so has the gossip about his dad’s scandalous liaison with that actress. Amid ex-convicts, colonists, local tribespeople, and just a handful of eligible young ladies, Edward is trying to be his own man, and keep secret that he has never read a single one of his dad’s books.

Conjuring u a life of cricket tournaments, horse-racing, and sheep droving in a community riven with prejudice and tensions, the tale about Edward’s adventures also provides an intimate portrait of Dickens’ too.