Schindler's List (Easton Press Signed Collector's Edition)

Thomas Keneally’s Booker Prize-winning account of Oskar Schindler, under the title by which the world knows it, signed by the author in Easton Press’s full leather Collector’s Edition.

Thomas Keneally was born in Sydney on 7 October 1935. He studied for the Catholic priesthood, abandoned that vocation in 1960, and published his first novel in 1964. He was shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times, in 1972 for The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, in 1975 for Gossip from the Forest and in 1979 for Confederates, before winning it in 1982 with Schindler’s Ark, the first novel by an Australian to do so. The book also won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction in 1983. He was made an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in 1983 for his service to literature, and is an Australian Living Treasure.

Schindler’s Ark was published in London by Hodder & Stoughton in 1982 and in the United States as Schindler’s List, the title used for this Easton Press edition and for Steven Spielberg’s film. The book began by chance. In October 1980 Keneally walked into a luggage shop in Beverly Hills to ask the price of briefcases. The owner, Leopold “Poldek” Pfefferberg, was a survivor of Schindler’s factories, and on learning that Keneally was a novelist he showed him his files on Schindler, including the original list. Pfefferberg went on to accompany Keneally to Poland. Keneally interviewed survivors over several years and drew on their testimony, adding scenes and dialogue where the documentary record was silent. He has said that what drew him to Schindler was that one could not say where opportunism ended and altruism began.

Oskar Schindler (1908–1974) was an industrialist and a member of the Nazi party who used Jewish forced labour in his Kraków enamelware factory. Over the war he spent his fortune on bribery, deception and false records to keep some 1,200 of his workers from the camps. The book asks how and why such a man arrived at the choices he made, and what they cost him.

Spielberg’s film of 1993, with Liam Neeson as Schindler, Ben Kingsley as Itzhak Stern and Ralph Fiennes as Amon Göth, won seven Academy Awards, among them Best Picture and Best Director. Keneally later told the story of his research in Searching for Schindler: A Memoir (2007).

Signed Collector's Edition. Signed by the author on the special signature page, with the Certificate of Authenticity, edition card and bookplate. Fine, and presenting as new. Octavo. 398pp. Illustrated with photographs. Full black leather. The spine has five raised bands with 22-carat gilt accents, and the covers and spine are decorated and lettered in gilt. All edges gilt. Moiré silk endpapers and a satin ribbon page marker. 

Fine. Presenting as new.

This book is currently not on display in store. If you would like more information or to arrange a viewing, please contact: rarebooks@harryhartog.com.au

Catalogue Number: HH000553