[Thomas Keneally's Schindler's Ark (published in the United States as Schindler's List)] deals with Europe during the Second World War….

Schindler's Ark is largely documentary: the account of a Sudeten German industrialist who saved at least 1,300 Jews from the extermination camps. Based on interviews with those who knew him, it aims 'to use the texture and devices of a novel to tell a true story'. What makes this approach peculiarly appropriate is that Schindler's life frequently resembles something from fiction. Running an armaments factory that produced nothing, playing cards with a demented Nazi for a Jewish girl's life, he seems a blend of Good Soldier Svejk and Scarlet Pimpernel.

A large, easy man, convivial, womanising, Schindler moved into Cracow in 1939, looking—in the wake of the Nazi oc-Thomas (Michael) Keneally 1935– © Jerry Bauercupation—for commercial opportunities. What he encountered was a different kind of opportunity: that of...