Searching for Schindler: A memoir
by Thomas Keneally
from Nan A. Talese
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.
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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.”
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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.)
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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.
Rabbit-Proof Fence
by Doris Pilkington
from Miramax
Following an Australian government edict in 1931, black aboriginal children and children of mixed marriages were gathered up and taken to settlements to be institutionally assimilated. In Rabbit-Proof Fence, award-wining author Doris Pilkington traces the story of her mother, Molly, one of three young girls uprooted from their community in Southwestern Australia and taken to the Moore River Native Settlement. There, Molly and her relatives Gracie and Daisy were forbidden to speak their native language, forced to abandon their heritage, and taught to be culturally white. After regular stays in solitary confinement, the three girls planned and executed a daring escape from the grim camp.
Crystal Woman: The Sisters of the Dreamtime
by Lynn V. Andrews
from Warner Books
Lynn Andrews, bestselling author of Star Woman and Jaguar Woman, continues her "chronicle of the spirit" with an extraordinary journey to th e wilderness of Central Australia, where she discovers the power of crystals.
While in Darkness There is Light: Idealism and Tragedy on an Australian Commune
by Louella Bryant
from Black Lawrence Press
A look at the lives of five young men who, during the Vietnam era, start a commune in Australia-and a look at how young men often look to the wild to find themselves and the consequences this sometimes yields. The Rosebud Farm project was born of idealism, commitment, and virtue, all deeply rooted in friendships that have transcended distance and time. The men in this story, insulated by wealth and innocent of heart, were trying to make sense of a tumultuous world and trying to find some peace in it.
One of these five young men was Charlie Dean, the brother of Howard Dean (who has written the introduction).
Louella Bryant has won numerous awards for her short stories and poems. She is the author of two young-adult historical novels-The Black Bonnet, finalist for the Vermont Book Award, and Father By Blood, winner of the Silver Bay Children's Literature Award-and a picture book, Two Tracks in the Snow. Louella teaches creative writing in the Spalding University MFA writing program in Louisville and mentors young writers at the New England Young Writers' Conference at Bread Loaf.
Dear Mem Fox, I Have Read All Your Books Even the Pathetic Ones: And Other Incidents in the Life of a Children's Book Author
by Mem Fox
from Harvest Books
A Pound of Paper: Confessions of a Book Addict
by John Baxter
from St. Martin's Griffin
Tent Boxing: An Australian Journey
by Wayne McLennan
from Granta UK
When Wayne McLennan was growing up in a sleepy Australian mining town in the 1950s, the most exciting event of the year was the arrival of Jimmy Sharman's boxing tent. Boxers would stand on a raised platform and challenge the local men and boys to fight. Aside from providing entertainment, these events challenged preconceptions about Aboriginals, who made up the bulk of Sharman's fighters. Decades later, McLennan returned to Australia to find that a few tents were still in operation in the remote, northern part of the country. This is McLennan’s thrilling memoir of joining with one of the tents and traveling with the group as a driver, referee, and occasional fighter. In the process of finding out what makes a man fight for money, McLennan learned even more about Australia’s troubled cultural past and the current mood of social relations and his fellow countrymen.
The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield: Volume Four: 1920-1921 (Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield)
by Katherine Mansfield
from Oxford University Press, USA
The letters in this volume cover the eighteen months Katherine Mansfield spent in England, France, and Switzerland from May 1920 to the end of 1921. It is the period of her finest stories, and when her life took its most decisive turn. The qualities of her earlier correspondence remain undiminished--the precision and directness, the intelligence and wit, the dark incisiveness and sheer fun. Above all, these letters attest to her considerable courage, against increasingly adverse odds, as she approached the final years of her life.
A Portrait of the Artist As Australian: L'Oeuvre Bizarre De Barry Humphries
by Paul Matthew St. Pierre
from McGill-Queen's University Press
Best known to his fans for the flamboyant character Dame Edna Everage, the Australian actor and comedian Barry Humphries is also a painter, composer, and critically acclaimed author. Taking outrageousness to new heights by borrowing from the British Music Hall tradition and the Dada art movement, this brilliant jester of the absurd has made millions laugh by casting stones at everyone and everything, from the Queen of England to Dame Edna's own purple bouffant wig."A Portrait of the Artist as Australian" offers the first critical assessment of Barry Humphries' entire career - as a daring post-modern deconstructionist on stage, film, and television, with sixty-seven stage shows, twenty-four film and thirty-four video appearances, thirty-four television series and seventy-one television appearances, and seventy-two audio recordings, but especially what he calls his 'second career' as author of twenty-nine books. With an oeuvre that includes novels, biographies, autobiographies, editions, compilations, comic books, poetry, dramatic monologues, sketches, film scripts, and several unclassified works, Humphries is a literary and dramatic artist of considerable significance. Arguing that Humphries is one of Australia's greatest writers, Paul Matthew St Pierre reveals a multi-faceted artist whose success is rooted in music halls, Dadaism, and his identity as an Australian.
Flaws In the Glass
by Patrick White
from Vintage Of Random House
In this autobiography Patrick White explains how on the rare occasions when he re-reads a passage form one of his books, he recognises very little of the self he knows. In this book is the self patrick White does recognise, the one he sees reflected in the mirror.
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