Keneally novel savages migrant policy

Keneally's Schindler's Ark was made into the film Schindler's List by Steven Spielberg

Booker Prize-winning Australian author Thomas Keneally, best known for his book Schindler's Ark, has strongly criticised Australia's immigration policy in his new book The Tyrant's Novel.

Keneally, one of the world's most prolific and successful writers, has been a long-term critic of the country's tough line on asylum.

Australia enforces the mandatory detention of unauthorised refugees while their requests to stay are considered.

"I had no doubt that I wanted to write this particular fable as a means of expressing my individual sense of being appalled at the detention policy of our government in Australia," Keneally told BBC World Service's The Ticket programme.

"I wanted to tell a fable that showed not that these people are a problem that has turned up on our border, but the impetus of tyranny, and the impetus of individual courage that went to make their journey as a refugee."

Oppression

The Tyrant's Novel centres around a writer in an unnamed Middle Eastern country forced to write to order by state's brutal leader.

The writer is given a month to write a book condemning sanctions imposed on the country, which is clearly based on Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

The writer tells his story from within an Australian asylum camp.

Keneally has often protested against the asylum policy

"I wanted, through this fable of a novelist who is asked by a tyrant to write a novel in 30 days, to typify the sort of pressure that the refugee is under," Keneally explained.

"I was conscious that this is one of the worst things we've done in our short history as a white settler community.

"I wanted to express that outrage through a fable."

Neither Iraq nor Australia are specifically named in the book, but Keneally said it was clear which counties he was referring to.

"It's heavily based on Iraq, but it's not meant to be Iraq in a social realist way," he said.

And he added that what happens to many of the people in his book is not far from the experience of Iraqis he had met in detention.

Keneally also said that he felt compelled to write "to show that I wasn't silent."

"I had to make it a good story... I had to express my anger at the level of detention.

"These are fully penal institutions in Australia under which these people are oppressed."

But he admitted that he did not feel it was likely to have a major impact in the real world.

"What I would love is that if it in any way had an effect that swung the opinion of one person out of the people that read this book, that would be great," he said.

"But I would not expect a huge political result out of this."

'Out-Schindlering Schindler'

Review copies of The Tyrant's Novel book include a personal message from Keneally, in which he says he feels the book is his "best work ever."

Prime Minister John Howard has defended it

Having written Schindler's Ark - which became the film Schindler's List - Keneally said it was a "benign challenge to write a book that out-Schindlers Schindler."

Keneally said that in The Tyrant's Novel - his 26th book - he was continuing to look at the "fault line" which splits people, having previously looked at Christians and Jews, and Ethiopians and Eritreans.

Although he admitted that "economic necessity" was also one of the reasons for the phenomenal work rate - equivalent to one book every 15 months - he also said he still had time to do things other than write.

"I get involved in political issues here, I've led a constitutional reform organisation, and I am of an age where I have to exercise every day," he added.

"So it's a rich and full life."