Searching for Schindler: A memoir [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

Thomas Keneally (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 14, 2008

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.
 
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.”
 
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.)
 
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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Australian author Keneally was awarded the 1982 Booker Prize for his novel Schindler's List. How Keneally came to write that novel about Oskar Schindler's rescue of more than a thousand Jews from the Holocaust is a tale that, curiously enough, began in Beverly Hills while the author was promoting his Civil War novel, Confederates. Looking for a new briefcase, he entered a luggage shop owned by the ebullient, charismatic Leopold Poldek Pfefferberg, one of Schindler's survivors. Poldek gave Keneally copies of documents he had once assembled for a Schindler film that was never made. Nan Talese, then at Simon & Schuster, offered a $60,000 advance for a book, and Keneally and Poldek left on an international research expedition. That journey and the survivors they met form the compelling centerpiece of this moving memoir. With publication, the question arose as to whether Schindler's List was a novel or history, but Keneally had planned from the start to write what Truman Capote or his publisher had called faction. The closing chapters cover the making of Steven Spielberg's 1993 film adaptation, which won seven Academy Awards. Photos. (Oct. 14)
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From Booklist

Keneally is the author of the award-winning Schindler’s List (1982), which became an Academy Award–winning film. Here, Keneally revisits his subject, the enigmatic Nazi OskarSchindler, who saved hundreds of Jews from Nazi death camps by employing them in his various (often bogus) factories. In 1981 Keneally was already an established writer when he stumbled across Schindler’s remarkable exploits. In a Beverly Hills luggage store, he met a Polish-born Jew and Holocaust survivor, Leopold Poldek Pfefferberg, a charming, loquacious, and insistent man who believed he had a great story to tell. His revelations led Keneally on an odyssey across multiple continents to interview Schindler’s survivors and acquaintances who could verify and expand upon Pfefferberg’s story. Keneally provides some interesting insights into the process of turning a series of decades-old remembrances into a great book. The strength of this work, however, is the stories of the survivors and their efforts to live with a degree of normalcy. Schindler remains as puzzling a character as ever. --Jay Freeman

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Nan A. Talese; 1 edition (October 14, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385526172
• ISBN-13: 978-0385526173
• Product Dimensions: 5.9 x 1 x 8.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #893,004 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #69 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Ethnic & National > Australian

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Confirmation, November 11, 2008

By 

Jon Maksik (Sun Valley, Idaho USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Searching for Schindler: A memoir (Hardcover)

Thomas Keneally is among the finest, most versatile and prolific writers in the world. His fiction and non-fiction range from the American South, to Ireland, to Eritrea, to World War I Europe, to Antarctica, and to contemporary and 'convict' Australia, his native country. And, of course to the Holocaust and his Booker Prize winning "Schindler's List" ("Schindler's Ark" everywhere but in the United States). "Searching for Schindler" is a moving account of how Keneally first heard of Oskar Schindler, how he crossed the globe to do the research necessary to write the novel, and how he participated in the making of the Academy Award winning film.

"Searching for Schindler" is also intensely personal and the reader comes to know many of the survivors Keneally interviewed and the author himself, a writer with a staggering capacity for work and an unquenchable thirst for understanding humanity. I recommend this book and everything Keneally has written. I have, for many years believed Thomas Keneally deserves consideration for the Nobel Prize; this book is confirmation of that belief.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good, not great, December 12, 2008

By 

Robert A. Saul (Greenwood, SC USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Searching for Schindler: A memoir (Hardcover)

I was really looking forward to this book based on a review in this newspaper. Started out gangbusters! It lost its focus after awhile and maps to show the various locations visited would have been very helpful. Still glad I read it as an adjunct to the book and the movie.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Schlinder Memoir from the author, June 30, 2009

By 

Stanley Abramson - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Searching for Schindler: A memoir (Hardcover)

Enjoyable book about the meeting between the author and the former Jewish
prisoner who settled in the US and was determined to have his experiences
about being saved by Schlinder published.