Thomas Keneally shares spoils of historical literary prize

Thomas Keneally has shared his $100,000 prize for winning the ARA Historical Novel Prize with his fellow nominees.

Thomas Keneally in 2018. Picture: James Croucher

Thomas Keneally turned 87 earlier this month. On Thursday, he won what must the squillionth award of his career, the ARA Historical Novel Prize, for a book called Corporal Hitler’s Pistol.

Keneally immediately announced his intention to share the prize money – it’s a $100,000 purse – with all the other writers on the shortlist.

Why?

“Because otherwise,” he said, with his familiar cackle, “it will all go to dentists and undertakers.”

In all seriousness, this grand old man of Australian letters wanted to share the bounty because “writing is not a hobby, not a lifestyle, it’s a career. So this is a small token to my fellow writers, to add to whatever other income keeps them afloat, many of them having criminally failed to be born into families of means”.

“There is vanity involved, of course,” he added, “because we all have that, but the main issue is treating writing as something for which there should be a financial reward.”

Keneally has been four times short-listed for the Booker Prize (he won it for Schindler’s Ark, which became the Oscar-winning film, Schindler’s List) and four times short-listed for the Miles Franklin (he’s won it twice) and yet, for many years, he couldn’t scratch a living together.

Writers make about $2 or $3 from the sale of every book; a “bestseller” (10,000 copies) puts around $30,000 in the primary producer’s pocket, minus tax.

Imagine if it took five years to write.

“Writers (are) like farmers – they get paid once or twice a year, and it’s got to last,” says Keneally. “One of the people who tried to convince people that writing is a career was (the late) Frank Moorhouse, who was always rather short of cash, but big on the craft of writing.

“Literature adds to national credibility. There is no formula for calculating the economic benefit of that, but there is something called cultural capital, and it comes from the likes of Peter Carey winning Booker Prizes.

“You don’t want a government minister saying: we’ve got an American blockbuster being made in Australia, and that will do us.

“Literature is treated like a strange little sect. But 20,000 people are employed by publishing and the benefits that come from local books is incalculable.

“It’s only the economic model that is broken.”

Besides the Booker and the Miles Franklin, and now the ARA Historical Novel Prize, Keneally has won the Los Angeles Times Prize, and the Mondello International Prize. He has been made a Literary Lion of the New York Public Library, and a Fellow of the American Academy; he’s recipient of the University of California gold medal, and – like the Queen – he’s been on an Australian stamp.

The Historical Novel Prize is sponsored by the building supply company, ARA, which has a philanthropic arm, devoted to the arts.

Corporal Hitler’s Pistol (Penguin Random House) took out the adult category, while the winner in the younger readers category was named on Thursday as Rabbit, Soldier, Angel, Thief (HarperCollins Australia) by Katrina Nannestad.

By chance, the judging panel in 2022 initially included Keneally’s daughter, the novelist Meg Keneally, who withdrew from the judging before her father made the shortlist.

Judge Angelo Loukakis said Keneally’s book “moves the reader skilfully from WWI to the Irish Civil War” with a voice filled with “wit, pathos, anger, and forgiveness”.

Far from resting on his laurels, Keneally will next week launch a new novel, Fanatic Heart (Vintage), making him one of a badelynge of energetic octogenarians currently occupying the writerly field.

Others include Britain’s Alan Garner, who at the age of 88 made this year’s Booker Prize shortlist, and America’s Cormac McCarthy, who at the age of 89 has two novels out this year – both of which will be reviewed in the Books pages of The Weekend Australian on Saturday.