Schindler's Ark Thomas Keneally 1982

Dustjacket synopsis:
"In the shadow of Auschwitz, a flamboyant German industrial 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 was a saviour.

"This is the story of Oskar Schindler who risked his life to protect beleaguered Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland, who continually defied the SS, and who was transformed by the war into a man with a mission, a compassionate angel of mercy."

Quotes:
"A extraordinary achievement" - Graham Greene
"Brilliantly detailed, moving, powerful and gripping" - The Times
"A magnificent book, powerful, harrowing and beautifully written" - Sunday Express
"Swift, cool and brilliantly succesful" - Books and Bookmen
"Thomas Keneally has done marvellous justice to a narvellous story" - Sunday Times
"Keneally is a superb storyteller. With Schindler's Ark he has given us his best book yet, a magnificent novel which held me from the first page to the last" - Alan Sillitoe

First Paragraph:

In Poland's deepest autumn, a tall young man in an expensive overcoat, double-breasted dinner jacket beneath it and - in the lapel of the dinner jacket - a large ornamental gold-on-black enamel swastika, emerged from a fashionable apartment block in Straszewskiego Street on the edge of the ancient centre of Cracow, and saw his chauffeur waiting with fuming breath by the open door of an enormous and, even in this blackened world, lustrous Alder limousine.

"Watch the pavement, Herr Schindler," said the chauffeur. "It's icy like a widow's heart."

From the Coronet paperback edition, 1983.

Notes:
This novel won the 1982 Booker Prize.
In 1993 Steven Spielberg directed a film adaptation of this novel under the title Schindler's List from a script by Steven Zaillian. The film featured Liam Neeson as Oskar Schindler, Ben Kingsley as Itzhak Stern, and Ralph Fiennes as Ramon Goeth.

This page and its contents are copyright © 1995-2002 by Perry Middlemiss, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

Last modified: March 28, 2002.