Schindler's List
Winner of the Booker Prize Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Fiction Schindler's List is a remarkable work of fiction based on the true story of German industrialist and war profiteer, Oskar Schindler, who, confronted with the horror of the extermination camps, gambled his life and fortune to rescue 1,300 Jews from the gas chambers. Working with the actual testimony of Schindler's Jews, Thomas Keneally artfully depicts the courage and shrewdness of an unlikely savior, a man who is a flawed mixture of hedonism and decency and who, in the presence of unutterable evil, transcends the limits of his own humanity.
Where Schindler's List keeps showing up
One of our editors' lists features this novel.
What you might want to know about Schindler's List
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Thomas Keneally reconstructs the true story of Oskar Schindler, a Catholic German factory owner and party member, who used his Krakow enamelware plant to keep over a thousand Jewish workers alive through the Holocaust.
Yes. Schindler's List (originally published as Schindler's Ark in 1982) is Thomas Keneally's documentary novel about Oskar Schindler, who saved more than 1,200 Jews from the Holocaust. Keneally interviewed survivors extensively.
Yes. The novel won the 1982 Booker Prize. The 1993 Steven Spielberg film adaptation won seven Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay.
Schindler's List was written by Thomas Keneally, published in 1993 by Washington Square Press.
Schindler's List is 429 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Schindler's List takes most readers 6 to 9 hours to finish.
Schindler's List is a standalone novel by Thomas Keneally, not part of a series.
Schindler's List is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
