TOM KENEALLY
His new book is a retelling of the life and exploits of Irish patriot John Mitchel
What was it about Irish nationalist John Mitchel that prompted you to make his life the basis for your new novel? Basically, the attraction was paradox. John Mitchel is a Van Diemen’s Land Mandela, beloved in his homeland for standing up to the policy that produced the Famine. That he was a champion of the starving of 1848 and then, for complex reasons, after a complicated Australian escape, a critic of brutal New York capitalism and a defender of the slave system in the South, was too large a paradox and an opportunity to give up.
What’s the best book you’ve read? I reckon it could be Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita, an almost perfect blend of magical and literal, of politics and mythology.
A book that had a pivotal impact on your life?
Grace Karskens, People of the River seemed a new way to look at Australian history.
The book you couldn’t finish? Ulysses by James Joyce. Must have another whack at it now I’m old.
A book you wish you had read but haven’t got to?
Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. My only excuse is the business of life and the fact there are more recent works.
How do you read books? Every way I can. I use audio for pleasure and hiking, presently reading a great book of John Boyne’s, The Heart’s Invisible Furies. I read in print, at the moment Antony Beevor’s Russia: Revolution and Civil War 1917-21, to be able to discuss it all with a granddaughter doing History Extension for HSC, but I read a lot of novels. Research I try to read digitally, and have quite a digital supply of research material.
What book do you re-read?
Sickeningly for my wife, I recite and re-read Shakespeare a lot. A cliche, I know. My coffee machine is named in honour of the English actor Charles Dance, my poshest Pommy reader, and I never get a cup of coffee from him without at the same time reciting an oration in Oz-lish. I re-read all the poetry anthologies I’ve got for another granddaughter who is a wonderfully talented poet.
What books are on your bedside table? Simon Sebag Montefiore, The Romanovs; Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead and Robyn Mundy’s Cold Coast.
What are you writing next? I am going to try to write about a murder that occurred in my grandparents’ town, the man who was hanged for it in 1895, his pardon by the Irish President in 2021, and the impact this had on family migration. Fanatic Heart, by Tom Keneally: Vintage Australia,
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