Thomas Keneally Wales in Sydney. In 1996 the State Library purchased this material from a private collector. Keneally has been awarded honorary doctorates including one from the National University of Ireland. Thomas Keneally Thomas Michael Keneally, AO (born 7 October 1935) is a prolific Australian novelist, playwright, and essayist. He is best known for writing "Schindler's Ark", the Booker Prize-winning novel of 1982 which was inspired by the efforts of Poldek Pfefferberg, a Holocaust survivor. The book would later be adapted to Steven Spielberg's "Schindler's List", which won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Both Keneally's parents (Edmund Thomas Keneally and Elsie
Thomas Keneally there. By 1942, the family had moved to 7 Loftus Crescent, Homebush, a working-class suburb in the west of Sydney and Keneally was enrolled at Christian Brothers St Patrick's College, Strathfield. Shortly after, his brother John was born. Keneally studied Honours English for his Leaving Certificate in 1952, under Brother James Athanasius McGlade, and won a Commonwealth scholarship. Keneally then entered St Patrick's Seminary, Manly, to train as a Catholic priest. Although he was ordained as a deacon while at the seminary, after six years there he left in a state of depression and without being ordained to the priesthood.