SOURCE: An interview in Australian Literary Studies, Vol. 12, No. 4, October, 1986, pp. 453-57.

In the following interview, Keneally discusses the function of history in his fiction, the significance of his non-Australian settings, and his fictional use of historical facts.

[Hergenhan:] A number of your novels have been concerned with history and war They have been set wholly or partly outside Australia often with no overt Australian element [Keneally interpolates: 'the sin against the Holy Spirit']. How would you account for this, do you see any recurrent concerns and associated aesthetic problems?

[Keneally:] The whole business of historical novels is that for a time I found history an easier model—paradigm to use that fashionable word—to work with than the present is. Unfortunately though, the reading public have problems with working out what sort of historical novel a novel is. As I said in an article in New Republic...