The Place at Whitton

Description

Tom Keneally's first novel, a psychological mystery, was published after his time in a seminary. Fifty years on, this anniversary edition is being released with a new author's note about the novel and fifty years of writing. In the shocking dirt of the cement floor, Wally lay now, indiscriminately felled amongst the piglets, prostrate on his stomach with his head on his side. Someone had battered him about the head and then strangled him with a noose of thin rope. When a man is found brutally murdered in Whitton's monastery, Dr Stenner, Whitton's president, is horrified. Could it possibly be the work of one of his priests? A nightmare begins as another brazen killing follows. The murderer appears to be a madman. Then, into the whirlpool of fear and violence, steps a cold and steely young woman who, it seems, has a very specific use for a priest gone bad. Stenner knows he must somehow control the fear whirling around the monastery, for 'death outside these walls was simply death; death within them might be called murder, vampirism, witchery' ...Tom Keneally is one of Australia's most loved and acclaimed writers; with this new edition of his first novel we can ce

Tom Keneally won the Booker Prize in 1982 with Schindler's Ark, later made into the Steven Spielberg Academy Award-winning film Schindler's List. His non-fiction includes the memoir Searching for Schindler and Three Famines, an LA Times Book of the Year, and the histories The Commonwealth of Thieves, The Great Shame and American Scoundrel. His fiction includes Shame and the Captives, The Daughters of Mars, The Widow and Her Hero (shortlisted for the Prime Minister's Literary Award), An Angel in Australia and Bettany's Book. His novels The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, Gossip from the Forest, and Confederates were all shortlisted for the Booker Prize, while Bring Larks and Heroes and Three Cheers for the Paraclete won the Miles Franklin Award. The People's Train was longlisted for the Miles Franklin Award and shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize, South East Asia division.