Download or read book Homebush Boy written by Thomas Keneally and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2016-08-23 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this playful and poignant memoir, Thomas Keneally returns to his adolescence in the suburbs of Sydney in 1952. At sixteen, the red-haired teenager idolized the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins and had aspirations of becoming a star on the track or rugby field. He also dreamed of wooing the beautiful and alluring Bernadette Curran until the day she announces her desire to become a nun. For the first time, Keneally started to consider priesthood himself. An insightful portrait of the transition from childhood to adulthood, Homebush Boy affectionately captures the awkwardness, grace, and all the contradictions of being a teenager.
Download or read book Contesting Childhood written by Kate Douglas and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2010-01-21 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The late 1990s and early 2000s witnessed a surge in the publication and popularity of autobiographical writings about childhood. Linking literary and cultural studies, Contesting Childhood draws on a varied selection of works from a diverse range of authorsùfrom first-time to experienced writers. Kate Douglas explores Australian accounts of the Stolen Generation, contemporary American and British narratives of abuse, the bestselling memoirs of Andrea Ashworth, Augusten Burroughs, Robert Drewe, Mary Karr, Frank McCourt, Dave Pelzer, and Lorna Sage, among many others. Drawing on trauma and memory studies and theories of authorship and readership, Contesting Childhood offers commentary on the triumphs, trials, and tribulations that have shaped this genre. Douglas examines the content of the narratives and the limits of their representations, as well as some of the ways in which autobiographies of youth have become politically important and influential. This study enables readers to discover how stories configure childhood within cultural memory and the public sphere.
Download or read book Childhood Studies written by Jean Mills and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-03-11 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The nature of childhood, the consideration of whether a certain age denotes innocence or not, and the desire to teach good citizenship to our children are all issues commonly discussed by today's media. This book brings together a variety of perspectives on the study of childhood: how this has been treated historically and how such a concept is developing as we move into the next century. The book is divided into five main sections: * part one sets the scene and provides the reader with an overview of attitudes towards childhood. * part two surveys the contribution of literature from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries * part three examines educational issues such as childrens' play, language acquisition and spiritual development * part four looks at the representation of children in film, television and other mass media * part five offers further help for study and research This book draws on a number of academic disciplines including education, literature, theology, language studies and history. It will be of particular use to those on Childhood studies courses and all those studying for a teacher qualification. Teachers of children aged between 4-12 years old will find its contribution to their continuing professional development extremely helpful.
Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Australian Literature written by Elizabeth Webby and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2000-08-21 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book introduces in a lively and succinct way the major writers, literary movements, styles and genres that, at the beginning of a new century, are seen as constituting the field of 'Australian literature'. The book consciously takes a perspective that sees literary works not as aesthetic objects created in isolation by unique individuals, but as cultural products influenced and constrained by the social, political and economic circumstances of their times, as well as by geographical and environmental factors. It covers indigenous texts, colonial writing and reading, poetry, fiction and theatre throughout two centuries, biography and autobiography, and literary criticism in Australia. Other features of the companion are a chronology listing significant historical and literary events, and suggestions for further reading.
Download or read book A Commonwealth of Thieves written by Thomas Keneally and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2007-12-04 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this spirited history of the remarkable first four years of the convict settlement of Australia, Thomas Keneally offers us a human view of a fascinating piece of history. Combining the authority of a renowned historian with a brilliant narrative flair, Keneally gives us an inside view of this unprecedented experiment from the perspective of the new colony’s governor, Arthur Phillips. Using personal journals and documents, Keneally re-creates the hellish overseas voyage and the challenges Phillips faced upon arrival: unruly convicts, disgruntled officers, bewildered and hostile natives, food shortages, and disease. He also offers captivating portrayals of Aborigines and of convict settlers who were determined to begin their lives anew. A Commonwealth of Thieves immerses us in the fledgling penal colony and conjures up the thrills and hardships of those first four improbable years.
Download or read book A History of Irish Autobiography written by Liam Harte and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-03-01 with total page 719 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A History of Irish Autobiography is the first ever critical survey of autobiographical self-representation in Ireland from its recoverable beginnings to the twenty-first century. The book draws on a wealth of original scholarship by leading experts to provide an authoritative examination of autobiographical writing in the English and Irish languages. Beginning with a comprehensive overview of autobiography theory and criticism in Ireland, the History guides the reader through seventeen centuries of Irish achievement in autobiography, a category that incorporates diverse literary forms, from religious tracts and travelogues to letters, diaries, and online journals. This ambitious book is rich in insight. Chapters are structured around key subgenres, themes, texts, and practitioners, each featuring a guide to recommended further reading. The volume's extensive coverage is complemented by a detailed chronology of Irish autobiography from the fifth century to the contemporary era, the first of its kind to be published.
Download or read book The People s Train written by Thomas Keneally and published by Sceptre. This book was released on 2012-09-27 with total page 549 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Artem Samsurov, a protégé of Lenin, makes an extraordinary escape from Tsarist Russia to reach sanctuary in Australia, but soon discovers that repression and injustice exist there too. Though distracted by an infatuation with a beautiful female lawyer, he throws himself back into the socialist cause, only to be imprisoned, then accused of murdering an informer. But he never loses his belief that the revolution will come - and in 1917, he returns to Russia alongside an Australian journalist to fight for it. Based on a true story, Keneally's enthralling novel takes us to the heart of the Russian Revolution through the dramatic exploits of one inspiring man. Once again, he illuminates a seismic period of history from an intimate, unusual perspective as he captures the ideals and passions behind a movement that changed the world.
Download or read book Three Famines written by Thomas Keneally and published by Public Affairs. This book was released on 2011-08-30 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Government neglect and individual venality, not food shortages, are historically the causes of sustained, widespread hunger."--Dust jacket.
Download or read book Schindler s List written by Thomas Keneally and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-08-06 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In remembrance of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and the Nazi concentration camps, this award-winning, bestselling work of Holocaust fiction, inspiration for the classic film and “masterful account of the growth of the human soul” (Los Angeles Times Book Review), returns with an all-new introduction by the author. An “extraordinary” (New York Review of Books) novel based on the true story of how German war profiteer and factory director Oskar Schindler came to save more Jews from the gas chambers than any other single person during World War II. In this milestone of Holocaust literature, Thomas Keneally, author of The Book of Science and Antiquities and The Daughter of Mars, uses the actual testimony of the Schindlerjuden—Schindler’s Jews—to brilliantly portray the courage and cunning of a good man in the midst of unspeakable evil. “Astounding…in this case the truth is far more powerful than anything the imagination could invent” (Newsweek).
Download or read book The Book of Science and Antiquities written by Thomas Keneally and published by Washington Square Press. This book was released on 2020-12-01 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thomas Keneally, the bestselling author of The Daughters of Mars and Schindler’s List, brings his “insightful and nimble prose” (The New York Times Book Review) to this exquisite exploration of community and country, love and morality, set in both prehistoric and modern Australia. An award-winning documentary filmmaker, Shelby Apple is obsessed with reimagining the full story of the Learned Man—a prehistoric man whose remains are believed to be the link between Africa and ancient Australia. From Vietnam to northern Africa and the Australian Outback, Shelby searches for understanding of this enigmatic man from the ancient past, unaware that the two men share a great deal in common. Some 40,000 years in the past, the Learned Man has made his home alongside other members of his tribe. Complex and deeply introspective, he reveres tradition, loyalty, and respect for his ancestors. Willing to sacrifice himself for the greater good, the Learned Man cannot conceive that a man millennia later could relate to him in heart and feeling. In this “meditation on last things, but still electric with life, passion and appetite” (The Australian), Thomas Keneally weaves an extraordinary dual narrative that effortlessly transports you around the world and across time, offering “a hymn to idealism and to human development” (Sydney Morning Herald).
Download or read book Crimes of the Father written by Thomas Keneally and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-10-10 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From one of our greatest living writers comes a “powerful story” (New York Post) about sin cloaked in sacrament, shame that enforces silence, and the courage of one priest who dares to speak the truth. Sent away from his native Australia to Canada due to his radical preaching against the Vietnam War, apartheid, and other hot button issues, Father Frank Docherty now enjoys a satisfying career as a psychologist and monk. When he returns to Australia to lecture on the future of celibacy and the Catholic Church, he is unwittingly pulled into the lives of two people—a young man and an ex-nun—both of whom claim to have been sexually abused by a prominent monsignor. As a member of the commission investigating sex abuse within the Church, and as a man of character and conscience, Docherty decides he must confront each party involved and try to bring the matter to the attention of both the Church and the secular authorities. What follows will shake him to the core and call into question many of his own choices. This riveting and timely novel is “the work of a richly experienced and compassionate writer [with] an understanding of a deeply wounded culture” (Sydney Morning Herald). It is an exploration of what it is to be a person of faith in the modern world, and of the courage it takes to face the truth about an institution you love.
Download or read book Searching for Schindler written by Thomas Keneally and published by Nan A. Talese. This book was released on 2008-10-14 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the captivating story behind Schindler’s List, the Booker Prize–winning book and the Academy Award–winning Spielberg film. Keneally tells the tale of the unlikely encounter that propelled him to write about Oskar Schindler and of the impact of his extraordinary account on people around the world. Thomas Keneally met Leopold “Poldek” Pfefferberg, the owner of a Beverly Hills luggage shop, in 1981. Poldek, a Polish Jew and a Holocaust survivor, had a tale he wanted the world to know. Charming, charismatic, and persistent, he convinced Keneally to relate the incredible story of “the all-drinking, all-screwing, all-black-marketeering Nazi, Oskar Schindler. But to me he was Jesus Christ.” Searching for Schindler is the engrossing chronicle of Keneally’s pursuit of one of history’s most fascinating and paradoxical heroes. Traveling throughout the United States, Germany, Israel, Poland, and Austria, Keneally and Poldek interviewed people who had known Schindler and uncovered their indelible memories of the Holocaust. Keneally’s powerful narrative rose quickly to the top of bestseller lists. Steven Spielberg’s magnificent film adaptation went on to fulfill Poldek’s dream of winning “an Oscar for Oskar.” (Keneally’s anecdotes about Spielberg, Liam Neeson, Ben Kingsley, and other cast members will delight film buffs.) Written with candor and humor, Seaching for Schindler is an intimate look at Keneally’s growth as a writer and the enormous success of his portrait of Oskar Schindler.
Download or read book Shame and the Captives written by Thomas Keneally and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-02-24 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “If the legendary Schindler’s List was not enough to showcase Thomas Keneally’s literary mastery, then [this novel] surely will” (New York Daily News) as the Booker Prize-winning author reimagines from all sides the drastic true events of the night more than one thousand Japanese POWs staged the largest and bloodiest prison escape of World War II. Alice is living on her father-in-law’s farm on the edge of an Australian country town, while her husband is held prisoner in Europe. When Giancarlo, an Italian inmate at the prisoner-of-war camp down the road, is assigned to work on the farm, she hopes that being kind to him will somehow influence her husband’s treatment. What she doesn’t anticipate is how dramatically Giancarlo will change the way she understands both herself and the wider world. What most challenges Alice and her fellow townspeople is the utter foreignness of the thousand-plus Japanese inmates and their deeply held code of honor, which the camp commanders fatally misread. Mortified by being taken alive in battle and preferring a violent death to the shame of living, the Japanese prisoners plan an outbreak with shattering and far-reaching consequences for all the citizens around them. In a career spanning half a century, Thomas Keneally has proven brilliant at exploring ordinary lives caught up in extraordinary events. With this profoundly gripping and thought-provoking novel, inspired by a notorious incident in New South Wales in 1944, he once again shows why he is celebrated as a writer who “looks into the heart of the human condition with a piercing intelligence that few can match” (Sunday Telegraph).
Download or read book Napoleon s Last Island written by Thomas Keneally and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-10-04 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The bestselling author of Schindler’s List and The Daughters of Mars returns with a remarkable novel about the friendship between a quick-witted young woman and one of history’s most intriguing figures, Napoleon Bonaparte, during the final years of his life in exile on St. Helena—hailed by the New York Times Book Review as “insightful and nimble...consistently fresh and engaging...call[ing] to mind the giants of 19th century fiction.” In October 1815, after losing the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon Bonaparte was banished to the island of Saint Helena. There, in one of the most remote places on earth, he lived out the final six years of his life. On this lonely island with no chance of escape, he found an unexpected ally: a spirited British girl named Betsy Balcombe who lived on the island with her family. While Napoleon waited for his own accommodations to be built, the Balcombe family played host to the infamous exile, a decision that would have devastating consequences for them all. In Napoleon’s Last Island, “master of character development and period detail” (Kirkus Reviews) Thomas Keneally recreates Betsy’s powerful and complex friendship with the man dubbed The Great Ogre, her enmities and alliances with his remaining courtiers, and her dramatic coming-of-age. Bringing a shadowy period of history to life with a brilliant attention to detail, Keneally tells the untold story of one of Europe’s most enigmatic, charismatic, and important figures, and the ordinary British family who dared to forge a connection with him.
Download or read book The Daughters of Mars written by Thomas Keneally and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-05-06 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In what is perhaps “the best novel of his career” (The Spectator), the acclaimed author of Schindler’s List tells the unforgettable story of two sisters whose lives are transformed by the cataclysm of the first world war. In 1915, Naomi and Sally Durance, two spirited Australian sisters, join the war effort as nurses, escaping the confines of their father’s farm and carrying a guilty secret with them. Amid the carnage, the sisters’ tenuous bond strengthens as they bravely face extreme danger and hostility—sometimes from their own side. There is great humor and compassion, too, and the inspiring example of the incredible women they serve alongside. In France, each meets an exceptional man, the kind for whom she might relinquish her newfound independence—if only they all survive. At once vast in scope and extraordinarily intimate, The Daughters of Mars is a remarkable novel about suffering and transcendence, despair and triumph, and the simple acts of decency that make us human even in a world gone mad.
Download or read book Thomas Keneally s Career and the Literary Machine written by Paul Sharrad and published by Anthem Press. This book was released on 2019-08-30 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Booker Prize winner and Living National Treasure, Thomas Keneally still divides critical opinion: he is both a morally challenging stylist and a commercial hack, a wise commentator on society and a garrulous leprechaun. Such judgements are located in the cultural politics of Australia but also linked to ideas about what a literary career should look like. ‘Thomas Keneally’s Career and the Literary Machine’ charts Keneally’s production and reception across his three major markets, noting clashes between national interests and international reach, continuity of themes and variety of topics, settings and genres, the writer’s interests and the publishers’ push to create a brand, celebrity fame and literary reputation, and the tussle around fiction, history, allegory and the middlebrow. Keneally is seen as playing a long game across several events rather than honing one specialist skill, a strategy that has sustained for more than 50 years his ambition to earn a living from writing.
Download or read book Literary Careers in the Modern Era written by Guy Davidson and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-04-29 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first study of the shape and diversity of the literary career in the 20th and 21st centuries. Bringing together essays on a wide range of authors from Australia, Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom, the book investigates how literary careers are made and unmade, and how norms of authorship are shifting in the digital era.
