Thomas Keneally is a natural storyteller, and if you were to trace his Irish roots, I have no doubt that there would be a more than one seanchaí in his lineage. Given the serious nature of the subjects he tackles, you’d think that the author of the seminal Schindler’s Ark (now better known as Schindler’s List) and more recently the First World War novel, The Daughters Of Mars, would be solemn and perhaps a little po-faced. In fact, Keneally is rather like a your favourite uncle – a wide-ranging intellect for sure, but funny and self-deprecating with it.

The PR has allocated us half-an-hour as Keneally is on a tight schedule. An hour later the lively 77-year-old is still telling me wonderful stories of convict girls and sailors, nurses and titled ladies.
His latest novel, The Daughters Of Mars, follows the story of sisters Sally and Naomi Durance, two Aussie nurses who join the war effort in 1915.
“I’d been writing these little social histories of Australia,” he explains. “They’re about aboriginals and convicts, which is all good sex and drugs and rock ‘n’ roll stuff, and the fact that the British went on using Australia as a dumping ground for the dumber sons of the gentry – I’m fascinated by Dickens having two sons, and Trollope having one son, in Australia and, in this great big landmass, they knew each other.
“When I came to writing about World War I, I read nurses’ journals, and was fascinated by a number of things. They wanted to see the whole world, in particular the northern hemisphere, because that’s where their forebears came from and it’s where culture is. I was interested by the extent to which they wanted to see their forefathers’ milieu and the glories of Europe but were not prepared for the fact that the glories of Europe or Egypt would be cheek-by-jowl with such horrors. The education they get is a double one – it’s a cultural education and an education in horror. They didn’t expect so much horror;no-one did at the start of that war.
“The other issue that I found fascinating about the journals was that they were able to deal with first of all, lack of status. They were still fighting the same fight as Florence Nightingale and nurses tell me they’re still fighting the same fight. These young women, the Durance sisters, have no rank. I found the nurses’ journals unconsciously feminist documents – I’m not trying to sound like a super sensitive fella, you know – but I did find them very interesting from a feminist point of view and I didn’t expect that. I expected them to be these beloved Madonnas in red capes. The wounded loved them but there were still doctors debating as late as 1918 whether they should be involved in nursing men at all.
“Last of all, was the issue of women under stress. I notice with Judy [his wife]… I once went to make a documentary about the war between Eritrea and Ethiopia. One night we were in Eritrea and we came across a group of nomads and they had with them a young girl who had trodden on a landmine some days previously. Judy, being a former nurse, just took that. If one of our daughters’ rooms had been untidy, Judy couldn’t have taken that, but she could take this. We put her in the truck and took her into this hospital dug into the rocks. Judy sat with her while the soundman and I were outside being sick.
“The fact that these young women could, en masse, deal with so much damage without going mad, interested me. When I read the journals, I felt it had to be a novel. Novels are very well suited to the people who are on the margins of society, on the margins of history.”
A composite of the nurses whose journals he read, the Durance sisters are different to the characters who’ve populated Keneally’s previous books.
“Generally my novels have people of Irish descent in them because I know what they’re like – melancholic bullshit artists who drink too much!” he laughs heartily. “But where I got these two young aloof Methodist girls from the Macleay Valley, I don’t know. The Macleay Valley is where I come from, and that hospital where Sally nurses – I think it’s true to say I nearly died in that hospital!”
Having a book like Schindler’s List in his back catalogue must be both a blessing and a curse.
“I tend to consider it a blessing, because it’s unavoidable. You go less mad if you consider the unavoidable a blessing!” he laughs. “It is though very uncharacteristic of my other work. You can say it’s good to be known for one book in particular, instead of being known for none. It did win the Booker Prize but I think the film cemented the fact that Schindler will always be there on the cover. The only thing is like any parent, you have runts of the litter – books that have limped along and yet are often your most beloved. You almost love them more than the clever child.
“What’s interesting about Schindler is that it’s a wonderful plot and it’s real – I’ll never come across a plot like that again and it pre-existed me. It’s either humiliating or humbling, or a bit of both, to know that it was the great plot of my life and I didn’t think it up! I keep trying to and I suppose it’s a benign challenge to try and knock Schindler’s List off its pedestal. But you know, that ungrateful little sod, Spielberg, won’t make any more of my books into films!”

The Daughters Of Mars is published by Sceptre