Thomas Keneally was born in Sydney in 1935. Of Irish descent, he trained for several years for the Catholic priesthood but did not take Orders. He worked as a schoolteacher, clerk and drama teacher. From the mid-1960s on, his novels began to appear and soon Keneally embarked on an extraordinary career as a writer, with remarkable success in Australia and overseas. He has won many prestigious literary awards. He won the Booker Prize in 1982 has won the Miles Franklin Award twice.
