Blood Red, Sister Rose

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.

Saint Joan lives again, robustly, in a way we have not known her before . . . The result is startling and, at the same time, amazingly plausible . . . Keneally's Jehanne, alone, is supple and fully dimensional. She is, at times, sharply nostalgic for the world of ordinary loves and lives she must leave behind . . . none of this diminishes Joan. It ennobles her sacrifice by making it real.