Overview

In a novel of breathtaking reach and inspired imagination, the Booker Prize-winning author of Schindler's Ark tells the stories of two men who have much in common. What separates them is 42,000 years. Shade lives with his second wife amid their clan on the shores of a bountiful lake. A peaceable man, he knows that when danger threatens, the Hero ancestors will call on him to kill, or sacrifice himself, to save his people. Over 40,000 years later, Shade's remains are unearthed near the now dry Lake Learned in New South Wales. The sensational discovery fascinates Shelby Apple, a documentary film maker who tracks the controversies it provokes about who the continent's first inhabitants were and where Shade's bones belong. Shelby goes on to follow his own heroes to the battlefields of Eritrea and the Rift Valley where Homo sapiens sprang from. When he, too, faces mortality and looks back on his passions, ideals and sorely tested marriage, Learned Man stands as an enduring spirit, a fellow player in the long, ever-evolving story of humankind.

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9781529355215

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Reviews

Few can match Keneally as a storyteller. * Guardian (Australia) * Keneally's gift, and his blessing to the many hundreds of characters he has created, is always to find the extraordinary within the ordinary. Each of them rises out of and above their varying backgrounds: the class, religion, ambition that mark but do not define them. * The Australian * Whatever country I have had the good fortune to visit as a writer I can honestly say that there is one Australian writer they know and rate as world class - one - and it is always Thomas Keneally. -- Richard Flanagan [Keneally] looks into the heart of the human condition with a piercing intelligence that few can match. * Sunday Telegraph * PRAISE FOR THOMAS KENEALLY'S WRITING: 'He weaves his magic and the reader falls under his spell.' * Guardian * In his new novel [Keneally] steps forth into a wide landscape of evolution, myth and primal emotion . . . It's quite glorious really . . . the whole book is a hymn to idealism, and to human development . . . As a portrait of passion, belonging, anger and forgiveness in marriage, in whatever stage of evolution, this book is deeply affecting . . . The dyings, when they come, are anything but humdrum . . . Drugs, magic, sickness, devotion and history: an irresistible cocktail to end with. * The Sydney Morning Herald * [An] impressive sketch of ghostly affinities between a man who makes images at once artistic and real out of the life he records and shapes, and another who conjures and kills and wills himself on the tightrope of justice and mercy in a time that Keneally is very adept at animating . . . [it is] vibrant with a spectral presence of descending birds and whisperings from congruent worlds . . . It leaps to Africa, it resounds with the shadow-world of ancient Australia, it can evoke a background of the Inuit, of any damn thing pertinent to the purposes of a master craftsman who has no intention of taking anything lying down. * The Saturday Paper, Australia * Learned's voice is a wonderful creation: modern, compassionate and filled with moral authority . . . Both perspectives in The Book of Science and Antiquities will fascinate Keneally's dedicated followers who have come to expect daring narratives dealing with themes of family, morality and moral responsibility. * Australian Bookseller *

Author Information

Thomas Keneally began his writing career in 1964 and has published more than thirty novels since. They include Schindler's Ark, which won the Booker Prize in 1982 and was subsequently made into the film Schindler's List, and The Chant Of Jimmie Blacksmith, Confederates and Gossip From The Forest, each of which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. He has also written several works of non-fiction, including his memoir Homebush Boy, Searching for Schindler and Australians. He is married with two daughters and lives in Sydney.

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