There can be no doubt that the story of Oskar Schindler is one of the more remarkable to emerge from the Second World War…. He was a swindler, a drunkard, and a womaniser. And yet, had he not been these things, he would not have been able to rescue hundreds of Jews from the concentration camps.

Keneally is quite understandably fascinated by this story. And he writes a very vivid book about it. But a narrative is all it is, laced with anecdote…. The story is so important to him that he has shrunk from the task of turning it into a novel.

Schindler is conceived as a very competent journalist would have conceived him, not as a novelist. There is nothing wrong with this. Schindler's Ark is not a novel. It is a highly competent, workaday piece of reportage. The feeling is therefore irresistible … that it represents...