Politics

The War against Others

Item: The Tyrant’s Novel
Author: Peter Pierce

by Peter Pierce •

August 2003, no. 253

The Tyrant’s Novel by Tom Keneally

Doubleday, $35 hb, 294pp

Politics

The War against Others

by Peter Pierce •

August 2003, no. 253

The Tyrant’s Novel is Tom Keneally’s twenty-fifth novel (if you don’t count the revision of The Fear as By the Line, or the two that he wrote as William Coyle of World War II). It is also one of his most unusual – satirical in purpose, sombre in tone. What is not different is the author’s willingness to take risks and freshly to venture.

Peter Pierce

Peter Pierce (1950-2018) was an Honorary Professor at Monash University. He edited The Cambridge History of Australian Literature and had been chief judge of the Prime Minister's Literary Award for Fiction for the many years. Among his other books are From Go to Whoa: A Compendium of the Australian Turf; Australian Melodramas: Thomas Keneally's Fiction; and The Country of Lost Children.