Thomas Keneally was born in Sydney, Australia, in 1935 into an Irish Catholic family. He completed his schooling at various schools on the New South Wales north coast before starting theological studies for the Catholic priesthood in 1958. He abandoned this vocation in 1960, working first as a laborer and then as a clerical worker before becoming a schoolteacher. In 1964, he published his first novel, The Place at Whitton. He then left teaching and took a part-time job as an insurance collector while he continued to write. He married Judith Martin in 1965; their daughters were born in 1966 and 1967. In 1967, Keneally won the Miles Franklin Award for literature for Bring Larks and Heroes, and since then he has pursued writing as a full-time profession.

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Four of Keneally's novels have been short-listed for the Booker Prize, Britain's most prestigious award for fiction writing. They are The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith...