Customer Reviews

Searching for Schindler: A memoir

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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.

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.

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.

Generating interest in Schindler was no walk in the park. This book follows Mr. Keneally's path to writing "Schindler's list" and how it finally made it's way to the big screen. Little glimpses into the ways of the publishing world and movie rights also help to enhance our understanding of this process. The Polish "heel clicking soldier" Leopold Page is both the introducer, catalyst, and heart behind this huge undertaking and after reading this book I was newly amazed at what the determination, and persistence of just one man can accomplish.
I've also read "Schindler's List" (also by Mr. Keneally) " The Road to Rescue..." by Mietek Pemper in that order prior to reading this book, something I would highly recommend. While "Schindler's List" broadly tells the story, "The Road to Rescue..." gives us a more detailed picture from the eyes of Mietek Pemper, the young secretary with the photographic memory. At last, this book brings us to the present day where we see how close we all were to missing this fascinating story altogether!

This is a most frustrating book. Keneally starts off in top gear, explaining how he first learned about Schindler from a luggage salesman (who was also a Holocaust survivor) in a California store. The description of the first meeting is very well done and the author clearly put in a lot of effort to show how he was gradually pushed into the idea of writing about the list. My suspicions that Keneally's heart wasn't fully in this book came early on when I wondered why he was detailing virtually every meeting he held with those people who had been helped by Schindler. He could have cut some of the less interesting encounters and kept the heart of the book. Things only deteriorate from this point as the author descends into a "Look at me, look what I did, aren't I smart?" mode. We learn far too much about his lecturing commitments and how he flew from A to B to C and then back to B and how, when a film was going to be made, the studio flew him first class across the Pacific. For me the lowest point was actually a picture caption which explains how Keneally and wife were getting into a stretch limo arranged by Universal Studios. I don't care about the limo and couldn't care less who provided it, but Keneally wants us to know. He's also partial to explaining which star actor and director he met at which occasion and what they said to each other. The end of the book drops off badly and it strikes me that at this stage, the author couldn't wait to hand it over to the publisher. Overall, this work was a major disappointment.

A mildly interesting story of how "Schindler's List" came to be- beginning with the author's chance meeting with Poldek Pfefferberg in the latter's Beverly Hills store, and ending with the film.

everybody who loved "Schindler List" the movie, should read this fascinating account by the author of the book that preceded it, full of fascinating background information about the real people behind the story.