‘I feel very jealous of Indian writers’
Thomas Keneally won the Booker and Los Angeles Times Prizes for Schindler’s Ark. The film, based on the book, was directed by Steven Spielberg and has consistently been rated among the top 10 films of all time. Keneally is a hugely successful writer, having published more than 25 books covering a wide range of topics, which have been translated into every major language. To Asmara covers the politics of famine and war in Africa, while The Great Shame is considered a definitive historical account of the Irish migration to the USA and Australia. In 1999, the Australian Government declared Keneally a ‘Living National Treasure’
Yes, I was a bit surprised. The Booker is always a hit and miss affair and you are lucky if your number comes up. Lately, they have not been going for venerable old authors but young, first-time and second-time novelists. Schindler’s Ark is very uncharacteristic of my books in many ways. But it has the same obsessions with guilt and ethnic hysteria which have always fascinated me. It is virtually a documentary novel. It has created so much controversy, yet I feel that I have written many better books since then.
Where did you get the idea of writing a book about how a German businessman saved thousands of Jews in World War II?
The idea came when I was buying a briefcase in a store in California on my way back to Australia from a film festival in Europe. The salesman who sold me the briefcase was one of the Jews saved by the German, Schindler, in World War II. The salesman was a very forceful character and he persuaded me to write the book. He felt that because I was an Australian and not Jewish, readers would feel that I had no axe to grind.
I studied for the priesthood which was a very bad idea for both the Church and myself. The Church likes apparatchiks, they are not as bad as the Nazi Schutzstaffel but want that sort of unquestioning loyalty. The Church by its nature is a totalitarian organisation and is in constant conflict with liberal democracy. And now, pluralistic democracy is winning with the help of some child-molesting bishops. My parents were from Ireland and had many left wing values like unionism. I was in the totalitarian church. I was totally divided between the two. The main problem with the Church is not celibacy, but the anti-human, infertile airlessness of its institutions.
At what point in your writing career did you feel that you had made it and that you could pursue art for art’s sake?
There are times that I have the delusion that art can only be for art’s sake. After the success of Schindler’s List, I had the delusion that everything was safe and that no one would dare not publish me. You are on your own with every new book now. Publishers will now look at a book and ask you whether it is ‘safe’ to publish it. This has happened to lots of writers but not to me yet, but there is no reason why it may not happen one day when I get older and sillier.
You spent four years researching for your book, The Great Shame, which tells the story of 80 years of Irish history as seen by Irish political prisoners on their way from Ireland to North America and Australia. Did you find any discrepancy between what the schools teach in the West and your research?
One of my motives of writing history is to let the non-British, non-Loyalist aspects of history to emerge. A lot of Australian history is written similar to the Irish Revisionism. Don’t mention that happened, otherwise it might result in people setting off bombs in North Ireland. Irish history in Canada has also been distorted. The Irish invasion which caused the unification of Canada has been presented as a drunken Irish excursion even though it was a hugely professional operation.
Britain’s imperial past and its policy of ‘divide and rule’ seemed to be a common element in many of the trouble spots in the world. What are your thoughts on that?
It is the way of all imperial powers. We are now seeing it with the majority Shias and minority Sunnis in Iraq. The Sunnis were the favoured group with the British. The British used the Scots to deal with the Irish and of course there are many such examples in India. Belgium did the same with the Tutsis and Hutus in Rwanda. Sunnis do not want to be ruled by Shia Ayatollahs. If you have to make peace you have to look through the other person’s eyes.
Why do you think that a minority of the Islamic world have become so extremist and are terrorising the West?
The Irish were the first to use dynamite for political demonstration. There was always a fringe which said that we are so oppressed that we will do anything. Even in the free Irish state cabinet you had people discussing machine gunning British cinema queues. You always have a fringe whose devices are so loud and bloody that they set the tone. The extremists in the Israeli side may not be doing it consciously, but they are politically delighted whenever a bomber blows up civilians, as it validates everything they warned about the other side. You have extremists even in Britain and Ireland who do not really want a settlement as they have built their careers on the fight.
How much does the affluent Jewish lobby affect American policies?
Without over-simplifying things, Europe did not pay for the Holocaust. If I were Jewish, I would be tempted to think that the world was content for the Germans to do its dirty work. There were many stories that some good German officers asked the British and Americans to drop leaflets in Germany telling the German populace that Jews were being massacred. But it never happened. And the train track to Auschwitz was never bombed to prevent the transportation of Jews to the gas chambers. One has to ask why it never happened. Personally, I feel that the American and British governments did not do more due to a mixture of anti-Semitism and were unable to grasp the enormity of the massacres by the Nazis. So, many Americans feel guilty about their actions. Also, probably subconsciously they reduce their guilt by letting the Jews get their own country and make it a client state and license it to take Palestinian land. Islam is seen as an outsider in all this and the Palestinians weigh against them. Even though many of them are Christians, the Israelis have suffered immensely in the past. Also, these bombings unhinge society. I wrote a book about how Jews were prosecuted, and many of my critics accused me of being anti-Palestinian which is not true at all. As a writer, I just want to present facts from both the sides.
Which Indian authors have you read ?
I have read Vikram Seth and Salman Rushdie, both of whom I know personally. Rushdie stayed at my house. I have also read Mistry and Roy. I feel very jealous about Indian writers because of their cultural complexity. I have travelled briefly to India, but I do get up in the mornings and feel that we should see it much more.
What do you think of book-piracy?
I have to say that my sneaking regard is for the spread of literacy. I am honoured that my books are pirated. The ultimate solution is world prosperity.
March 26, 2005