Thomas Keneally, one of Australia’s most acclaimed novelists, says he will share a $50,000 literary prize with his fellow nominees.
The 87-year-old novelist, who has previously won the Man Booker prize and the Miles Franklin, was announced on Thursday as the winner of the ARA Historical Novel prize for his latest novel Corporal Hitler’s Pistol.
Receiving the prize, Keneally said he would give $4,000 (£2,200) to the six authors who made the ARA prize longlist: Karen Brooks, Lauren Chater, Steven Carroll, Portland Jones, Kim Kelly and David Whish-Wilson.
Geraldine Brooks and Robyn Mundy, who were also shortlisted with Keneally, already received $5,000 from the prize for their achievement.
“I wanted to look after some of the other writers on the longlist because writing – for young and old – is often a matter of combining pittances to make a living,” Keneally told ABC Radio.
“Writing a novel at 87 is exactly the same process as writing at the age of 25,” he added, “but we need to win a prize occasionally so we can maintain the delusion that we’re a novelist.”
Keneally is the author of Schindler’s Ark, the book adapted to Steven Spielberg’s film Schindler’s List. He won the Man Booker prize in 1982 and the Miles Franklin award in 1967.
Corporal Hitler’s Pistol, Keneally’s 35th novel, is based on a story the author heard in his home town of Kempsey, New South Wales, that there was a local farmer who had once held Hitler prisoner and taken his pistol from him. The novel explores the impacts of the traumas of the interwar period on rural Australian communities.
Also on Thursday night, Katrina Nannestad was named the winner of the ARA Historical Novel prize’s younger readers category, for her novel Rabbit, Soldier, Angel, Thief. The novel follows a Russian boy trying to survive alone during the second world war.
This not the first time an Australian author has shared their winnings with their fellow nominees. The first ever Stella prize winner, Carrie Tiffany, split $10,000 of her $50,000 prize money among the other five shortlisted writers.
And when UK writer Olivia Laing won the James Tait Black prize in 2019, she divided her £10,000 prize money between her fellow shortlisted writers, saying “competition has no place in art”.
