"In the nineteenth century, Ireland lost half of its population to famine, emigration to the United States and Canada, and the forced transportation of convicts to Australia. The forebears of Thomas Keneally, author of Schindler's List, were victims of that tragedy, and in The Great Shame Keneally has written an astonishing, monumental work that tells the full story of the Irish diaspora with the narrative grip and flair of a great novel. Based on unique research among little-known sources, this masterly book surveys eighty years of Irish history through the eyes of political prisoners--including Keneally's ancestors--who left Ireland in chains and eventually found glory, in one form or another, in Australia and America.
We meet William Smith O'Brien, leader of an uprising at the height of the Irish Famine, who rose from solitary confinement in Australia to become the Mandela of his age; Thomas Francis Meagher, whose escape from Australian captivity led to a glittering American career as an orator, a Union general, and governor of Montana; John Mitchel, who became a Confederate newspaper reporter, gave two of his sons to the Southern cause, was imprisoned with Jefferson Davis--and returned to Ireland to become mayor of Tipperary; and John Boyle O'Reilly, who fled a life sentence in Australia to become one of nineteenth-century America's leading literary lights.
Through the lives of many such men and women--famous and obscure, some heroes and some fools (most a little of both), all of them stubborn, acutely sensitive, and devastatingly charming--we become immersed in the Irish experience and its astonishing history. From Ireland to Canada and the United States to the bush towns of Australia, we are plunged into stories of tragedy, survival, and triumph. All are vividly portrayed in Keneally's spellbinding prose, as he reveals the enormous influence the exiled Irish have had on the English-speaking world."
-Publisher's blurb.
'Internationally, Thomas Keneally is one of Australia’s most successful authors, whether in terms of critical reception, book sales, or author profile. He is probably best known as the author of Schindler’s List from 1982—Schindler’s Ark in Britain and Australasia—even if his fame in this regard has been somewhat obscured by Stephen Spielberg’s multi-Oscar-winning movie of 1993. The story of how Keneally came to write this book and its subsequent success is one of the more remarkable episodes in Australian book history, and of course it is by no means confined to Australia, its point of origin only in a very qualified sense. Published simultaneously in London, New York, and Sydney, Schindler’s List appeared in at least eight different English-language and fourteen foreign-language editions even before the release of Spielberg’s movie. It won the Booker Prize for 1982, the first by an Australian novelist, although Keneally had already been short-listed for the award on three occasions. Across the Atlantic, it was one of the New York Times ’ Best Books of 1982, and in the following year the winner of the Los Angeles Times Fiction Prize. The movie’s success meant new English and American editions together with a dozen or so translations in 1994 alone, including Turkish, Japanese, Chinese, and Catalan versions. New Czech and Marathi editions appeared as recently as 2009.' (Author's introduction)
Ancestral Narratives: Irish-Australian Identities in History and Fiction
Saarbrucken
:
VDM Verlag
,
2008-2009
Z1664583
2008-2009
single work
criticism
Ancestral Narratives: Irish-Australian Identities in History and Fiction
Saarbrucken
:
VDM Verlag
,
2008-2009
Z1664583
2008-2009
single work
criticism
'Internationally, Thomas Keneally is one of Australia’s most successful authors, whether in terms of critical reception, book sales, or author profile. He is probably best known as the author of Schindler’s List from 1982—Schindler’s Ark in Britain and Australasia—even if his fame in this regard has been somewhat obscured by Stephen Spielberg’s multi-Oscar-winning movie of 1993. The story of how Keneally came to write this book and its subsequent success is one of the more remarkable episodes in Australian book history, and of course it is by no means confined to Australia, its point of origin only in a very qualified sense. Published simultaneously in London, New York, and Sydney, Schindler’s List appeared in at least eight different English-language and fourteen foreign-language editions even before the release of Spielberg’s movie. It won the Booker Prize for 1982, the first by an Australian novelist, although Keneally had already been short-listed for the award on three occasions. Across the Atlantic, it was one of the New York Times ’ Best Books of 1982, and in the following year the winner of the Los Angeles Times Fiction Prize. The movie’s success meant new English and American editions together with a dozen or so translations in 1994 alone, including Turkish, Japanese, Chinese, and Catalan versions. New Czech and Marathi editions appeared as recently as 2009.' (Author's introduction)
