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'One of the world's greatest writers.' Spectator 'God save all
here.' Summer, 1847. People are getting used to the corpses lying
by the road and along the ditches. For John Mitchel - lawyer,
journalist, activist, politician - the word 'famine' will forever
conjure the hollowed faces of Ireland's dead, the liquid Irish of
the past now mute on their tongues. Propelled by disgust at the
injustice, Mitchel will do all he can to fight for the destitute,
the starved, the forgotten. His odyssey will take him all the way
to America - that land of promise - but it will draw him into a
terrible paradox, blurring the lines that divide liberation from
dispossession and forcing him to ask: can one act of devastating
cruelty and oppression prevent another?
A novel of breath-taking reach and inspired imagination, drawing on
the discovery of Australia's oldest known human inhabitant. Shade
lives peaceably with his second wife on the shores of a bountiful
lake. Conscious of ageing but still vigorous, when called on by the
spirit ancestors to sacrifice himself for the sake of his clan, he
knows he must obey. Over 40,000 years later, Shade's skeleton is
unearthed near the now dry Lake Learned in New South Wales. The
sensational discovery of so-called 'Learned Man' rewrites the
history of Australia and fuels the Aboriginal people's claim to be
the land's rightful owners - and has a lasting impact on a young
documentary maker, Shelby Apple, who gets caught up in the fate of
Learned's remains. When Shelby, too, faces mortality and looks back
on his life, Learned stands as an enduring spirit, a fellow player
in the long, ever-evolving story of humankind.
'God save all here.' Summer, 1847. People are getting used to the
corpses lying by the road and along the ditches. For John Mitchel -
lawyer, journalist, activist, politician - the word 'famine' will
forever conjure the hollowed faces of Ireland's dead, the liquid
Gaelic of the past now mute on their tongues. Propelled by disgust
at the injustice, Mitchel will do all he can to fight for the
destitute, the starved, the forgotten. His odyssey will take him
all the way to America - that land of promise - but it will draw
him into a terrible paradox, blurring the lines that divide
liberation from dispossession and forcing him to ask: can one act
of devastating cruelty and oppression prevent another?
Winner of the Booker Prize and international bestseller, made into
the award-winning film Schindler's List. In the shadow of
Auschwitz, a flamboyant German industrialist grew into a living
legend to the Jews of Cracow. He was a womaniser, a heavy drinker
and a bon viveur, but to them he became a saviour. This is the
extraordinary story of Oskar Schindler, who risked his life to
protect Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland and who was transformed by the
war into a man with a mission, a compassionate angel of mercy.
The story of Joan of Arc has always held a special fascination for
writers - among them Voltaire, Mark Twain, George Bernard Shaw and
Jean Anouilh. Here Thomas Keneally transforms the legend,
presenting a Joan who is at once a tough radical, an instinctive
soldier, a nagging prophet and a touchingly vulnerable girl - a
haunting and compelling heroine framed by the tumultuous times in
which she lived.
Sydney, 1942, and in a nation threatened by a Japanese invasion,
with husbands absent and sleek GIs present, a spirit of
recklessness takes hold. Frank Darragh, an impressionable young
priest, finds the line between saving others' souls and losing his
own begins to blur as he becomes entangled with an attractive
married woman, a menage a trois, and a charismatic American
sergeant.
On the island of St Helena in the south Atlantic ocean, Napoleon
spends his last years in exile. It is a hotbed of gossip and secret
liaisons, where a blind eye is turned to relations between
colonials and slaves. The disgraced emperor is subjected to vicious
and petty treatment by his captors, but he forges an unexpected
ally: a rebellious British girl, Betsy, who lives on the island
with her family and becomes his unlikely friend. Based on fact,
Napoleon's Last Island is the surprising story of one of history's
most enigmatic figures and a British family who dared to associate
with him. It is a tale of vengeance, duplicity and loyalty, and of
a man whose charisma made him dangerous to the end.
The Hachette Essentials series comprises a collection of titles
that are regarded as modern classics. A carefully and lovingly
curated selection of distinctive, ground-breaking fiction and
non-fiction titles published since 1950. Timeless. Relevant.
Passionate. Unified as a series - distinctive as books. A good book
is great. A great book is essential. In the shadow of Auschwitz, a
flamboyant German industrialist grew into a living legend to the
Jews of Cracow. He was a womaniser, a heavy-drinker and a bon
viveur, but to them he became a saviour. This is the extraordinary
story of Oskar Schindler, who risked his life to protect Jews in
Nazi-occupied Poland and who was transformed by the war into a man
with a mission, a compassionate angel of mercy. Thomas Keneally's
novel first brought the story of Oskar Schindler to international
attention in 1982, when it won the Booker Prize. It was made by
Steven Spielberg into the Oscar-winning film Schindler's List in
1993, the year Schindler and his wife were named Righteous Among
the Nations.
'When I was born in 1935 I grew up, despite depression and World
War II, with a primitive sense of being fortunate . . . The Utopian
strain was very strong . . . if we weren't to be a better society,
if we were simply serfs designed to support a system of privilege,
what was the bloody point?' Tom Keneally has been observing,
reflecting on and writing about Australia and the human condition
for well over fifty years. In this deeply personal, passionately
drawn and richly tuned collection he draws on a lifetime of
engagement with the great issues of our recent history and his own
moments of discovery and understanding. He writes with unbounded
joy of being a grandparent, and with intimacy and insight about the
prospect of death and the meaning of faith. He is outraged about
the treatment of Indigenous Australians and refugees, and argues
fiercely against market economics and the cowardice of climate
change deniers. And, he introduces us to some of the people, both
great and small, who have dappled his life. Beautifully written,
erudite and at times slyly funny, A Bloody Good Rant is an
invitation to share the deep humanity of truly great Australian.
The result of a collaboration between Sydney s Macquarie University
and International PEN Sydney Centre, and funded by the Australia
Council for the Arts and the Australian Research Council, The
Literature of Australia gathers the most distinctive and most
significant of the nation s writing. Highlights include: Coverage
of over two hundred years of literature in all genres, from the
1700s to the present, and over 500 entries from 307 different
authors, including writing by Aboriginal authors from the early
colonial period to the present. Work from contemporary authors of
international renown, including Shirley Hazzard, Peter Carey, David
Malouf, Les Murray, Alexis Wright, and Kate Grenville. Biographical
details about the authors of the works selected, an introductory
essay, major essays setting the works in their historical context,
and suggestions for further reading.
The Literature of Australia offers readers of all kinds a window
into the myriad ways of being Australian."
In 1915, two spirited Australian sisters join the war effort as
nurses, escaping the confines of their father's dairy farm and
carrying a guilty secret with them. Used to tending the sick as
they are, nothing could have prepared them for what they confront,
first in the Dardanelles, then on the Western Front. Yet they find
courage in the face of extreme danger and become the friends they
never were before. And eventually they meet the kind of men worth
giving up their precious independence for - if only they all
survive. At once epic in scope and extraordinarily intimate, The
Daughters of Mars brings the First World War to vivid life from an
unusual perspective. Profoundly moving, it pays tribute to the men
and women who voluntarily risked their lives for peace.
By the Booker-winning author of Schindler's Ark, a vibrant novel
about Charles Dickens' son and his little-known adventures in the
Australian Outback. In 1868, Charles Dickens dispatches his
youngest child, sixteen-year-old Edward, to Australia. Posted to a
remote sheep station in New South Wales, Edward discovers that his
father's fame has reached even there, as has the gossip about his
father's scandalous liaison with an actress. Amid colonists,
ex-convicts, local tribespeople and a handful of eligible young
women, Edward strives to be his own man - and keep secret the fact
that he's read none of his father's novels. Conjuring up a life of
sheep-droving, horse-racing and cricket tournaments in a community
riven with tensions and prejudice, the story of Edward's adventures
also affords an intimate portrait of Dickens' himself. This
vivacious novel is classic Keneally: historical figures and events
re-imagined with verve, humour and compassion.
The extraordinary tale of Oskar Schindler, the Aryan who saved
hundreds of Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland, is now legendary, but as
Tom Keneally reveals in this absorbing memoir, luck and the dogged
persistence of one of 'Schindler's Jews' were vital in bringing it
to the world's attention through his Booker Prize-winning novel,
SCHINDLER'S ARK and the subsequent film, SCHINDLER'S LIST.
Entertaining, inspiring and filled with anecdotes about the many
people involved, from the survivors Keneally interviewed to Steven
Spielberg and Liam Neeson, Searching for Schindler gives a
revealing insight into a writer's mind and the creation of a modern
classic. It also traces what happened in the decades after the war
to Schindler, his wife, and the people they rescued - including
Leopold Pfefferberg, who made it his mission to repay his priceless
debt to Schindler. Above all, it sheds renewed light on a
fascinatingly flawed man, and an instance of exceptional humanity
amid the greatest inhumanity mankind has known.
'Exceptionally good...a master storyteller' Allan Massie, Scotsman
'Both an absorbing wartime thriller and a thoroughly convincing
study of grief' Sunday Times In 1943, when Grace and Leo Waterhouse
married in Australia, they were part of a young generation ready to
sacrifice themselves to win the war, while being confident they
would survive. Sixty years on, as Grace recounts what happened to
her doomed hero, she can say what she suspected then: that for many
men, bravery is its own end. The tale she tells is one of great
love, lost innocence, a charismatic but unstable Irish commander,
dashing undercover missions against the Japanese in Singapore, and
- in her eyes - reckless, foolhardy exploits. As fresh details
continue to emerge, Grace is forced to keep revising her picture of
what happened to Leo and his fellow commandoes - until she learns
about the final piece in the jigsaw, and an ultimate betrayal. As
absorbing as it is thought-provoking, this timely novel poses
unsettling questions about what drives men to battle and heroic
deeds, and movingly conveys the life-long effect on those who
survive them.
Schoolboy narrator Daniel Jordan, growing up in working-class
Sydney during the Second World War, is confused by a world in which
the religious dogma of his school conflicts with the communism of
his family's terrifying neighbour, the 'Comrade'. Refreshingly
unsentimental, this is the funny, ultimately tragic story of a boy
struggling to understand a world in which concepts like innocence
and guilt, good and evil are clearly open to interpretation.
In turn-of-the-century Australia, Tim Shea supports his young
family by running a general store in a remote riverside town, where
he finds the same hypocrisy and snobbery which made him emigrate
from Ireland, and suffers a series of misfortunes which take him to
the brink of disaster. Capturing the spirit of the times, this is
the mesmerising tale of a flawed hero whose stubborn integrity is
nearly his undoing.
With a new introduction by Thomas Keneally. 'The best novel of the
Civil War since The Red Badge of Courage' Newsweek As the Civil War
tears America apart, General Stonewall Jackson leads a troop of
Confederate soldiers on a long trek towards the battle they believe
will be a conclusive victory. Through their hopes, fears and
losses, Keneally searingly conveys both the drama and mundane
hardship of war, and brings to life one of the most emotive
episodes in American history.
The thrilling story of an ill-fated expedition to the South Pole
by the bestselling and award-winning author of Schindler's List.
In the waning years of the Edwardian era, a group of English
gentleman- adventurers led by Sir Eugene Stewart launched an
expedition to reach the South Pole. More than sixty years later,
Anthony Piers, the official artist of the New British South Polar
Expedition, finally unveils the sobering
conditions of their perilous journey: raging wind, bitter cold,
fierce hunger, absolute darkness-and murder.
The first two decades of the twentieth century were known as the
"heroic era" of Antarctic exploration. In 1911, Roald Amundsen
reached the South Pole. Weeks later, doomed British explorer Robert
Falcon Scott arrived-and then perished in a blizzard. And in 1914,
Ernest Shackleton embarked on his infamous voyage to Antarctica.
Set during this epic period of adventure and discovery, Victim of
the Aurora re-creates a thrilling time in an unforgiving place and
is a brilliantly plotted tale of psychological suspense.
Keneally's magnificent story of a young officer in a penal colony
during the founding days of Australia transports readers through
layer after layer of life in Sydney Cove, Australia. Advertising in
New York Review of Books and Village Voice Literary Supplement.
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