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KENEALLY**, THOMAS: : A RIVER TOWN

LONDON.SCEPTRE/HODDER & STOUGHTON,1995.

ISBN 034061093X.

UK,8vo HB+dw/dj,1st edn.[Complete number line 10 - 1 descending.] FINE/FINE.No owner inscrptn and no price-clip to dw/Dj.Bright,crisp,clean,matt, scenic colour photographic illustrated dw/dj panels,with white and blue lettering; with negligible shelf-wear and creasing to edges and corners - no major nicks or tears present.Top edges lightly dust-soiled and minimally toned, fore-edges brighter and cleaner; contents bright,tight,clean,solid and sound - near pristine - no dog-ear reading creases to any pages' corners,appears unread - apart from my own collation.Publisher's bright,crisp,clean, sharp-cornered - apart from two lower corners which have minimal bumping - original plain dark blue cloth boards with bright,crisp,blocked silver gilt letters to spine/backstrip and immaculate plain white endpapers.UK,8vo HB+dw/dj,1st edn,1-330pp [paginated] includes prologue,13 chapters and a Close chapter; plus [unpaginated] half-title+ title pages,a dedication page with an epigram. In 1900 the beginning of a new century excites even the isolated riverside town of Kempsey in New South Wales,accessible from Sydney only by a long steamer trip. Here,too,the politics of the wider world and its epidemics still pursue the young Irish immigrant Tim Shea. Tim keeps a general store by the river and so supports his wife,the feisty Kitty,and their two children. Fortune,however eludes him.His generosity leads him into debt,exacerbated when he takes in a wild little girl orphaned in an accident. Proud of his principles,he recklessly opposes a call to support the British army in the Boer War and finds his store blacklisted.Only a Punjabi hawker seeks his friendship,attributing to him acts of valour which Tim disclaims.And all the while he is bedevilled by the face of a young, dead woman whose head,preserved in a jar by the police,no one can or will identify. When bubonic plague strikes Kempsey,Tim is forced into quarantine alongside his main adversary.Yet it is through the anguish of this situation that he achieves redemption and liberates the ghost of the nameless woman. This is the tale of a reluctant hero,an endearing,if flawed,man whose stubborn integrity is nearly his undoing.Vividly conveying the spirit of the times,Thomas Keneally's vibrant portrait of the river town of Kempsey manifests the inescapability of human malice in a place of natural splendour. Please contact seller,for correct shipping/P+p quotes - particularly ALL overseas buyers - BEFORE ordering through the order page! UK,8vo HB+dw/dj,1st edn.[A UK 1st edn,1st impression which precedes,by a few weeks,the Australian 1st edn.A 2nd impression was published October 1982.Book was the 1982 Booker Prize winning novel too.] FINE+/FINE.No owner inscrptn but price-clip to dw/dj.Bright,crisp, clean,glossy laminated,colour pictorial illustrated dw/dj,with pale grey+white lettering; with negligible shelf-wear or creasing to edges and corners - no nicks,tears or splits present.Spine/backstrip of dw/dj ubiquitously and slightly sunned/faded from it's original vibrant red.Top+fore-edges bright and clean - no foxing/spotting; contents bright, tight,clean,solid and sound - virtually pristine - no dog-ear reading creases to any pages' corners,would appear unread - apart from my own collation.Publisher's bright,crisp,clean,sharp-cornered,original plain black cloth boards with bright,crisp,blocked gilt letters to spine/backstrip and immaculate plain white endpapers. Book has NO lean or spine-roll - straight,square and tight.UK,8vo HB+dw/dj,1st edn,9-432pp [paginated] includes author's note with his facsimile signature at it's conclusion,a prologue,38 chapters and an epilogue; plus [unpaginated] half-title+title pages,a glossary (SS Ranks and their Army equivalents) with b/w city street map (Cracow) to its verso,b/w street map with Ghetto inset map,with a b/w sketch map of K L PLASZOW (Schindler's Factory) to verso. Item presents as really superb and exceptional quality/condition of those I've handled - so far. A highly collected Booker Prize winning author and this title will be an important and welcome addition to the Keneally/Booker Prize canon. Drawing on his own extensive researches, Keneally takes us back into Nazi-occupied Poland,from where an extraordinary tale emerges - of an extraordinary man's mission to save the Jewish people. On the face of it,lusty,worldly Oskar Schindler was a most unlikely missionary.He had moved to Cracow in the wake of the Nazi occupation of Poland to profit from the rich pickings to be had by the bold and by the Aryan.A big man in every sense,with an appetite to match,for success,for women and for drink,Schindler,a Sudeten German,thrived.He rapidly established himself as a powerful Cracow figure,head of a major industrial concern moulded from the ruins of threatened Jewish-run businesses,a dabbler in the black market - partly to keep himself and his mistress in the manner to which they were accustomed,partly for the hell of it - and a man with influential connections extending far outside Cracow.Schindler was a man who knew how to play his cards. Yet this was a man whose deeds by the end of the war were to have earned him a place on Mount Zion as one of the honoured dead of the Israeli nation.On the Avenue of Righteous People a tree bears his name. Schindler was to become a champion of the oppressed,the protector of the Jews,at a time when prudent people thanked their lucky stars for their birthright and kept their eyes averted. Always a man of extravagant gestures,Schindler was to achieve a series of fantastic feats in his championing of 'his Jews',in fact of any Jew fortunate enough to come under his protection. What began as an instinctive distaste for the bully and the pervert was to develop into an increasingly fervent campaign as the anti- Jewish measures of the Nazis escalated. Schindler succeeded in walking a tightrope between Nazi officials and Jewish contacts - a tightrope which involved him in playing cards for the life of a Jewish girl with the local camp commandant,laying out a personal fortune in bribes,and eventually led him to the gates of Ausschwitz to extract his chosen people from under the eyes of the infamous Mengele. . . 'Schindler's Ark' tells of the exceptional people that he attracted to himself,of the band of courageous women with whom he was involved - and of the nobility and sagacity of individuals whom he came to know among the Jewish people. But,above all,it exposes the strange quirk of fate,or of human character,which could produce in Schindler a mission to save and yet in others,often very similar in temperament,and equally far from sanity,a mission to exterminate. Please contact seller,because of the weight and the value of this item for correct,insured shipping/P+p quotes - particularly ALL overseas buyers - BEFORE ordering through the order page! N.B. ALL buyers please note,stocks' actual shipping/P+p costs are adjusted and any difference is refunded,after order's receipt and before the order's despatch,especially if the item(s) are offered either P+p included/FREE. ** N.B. US/Canada customers please be aware: Standard AIRMAIL postage from UK to these destinations can now cost more than the price of the book! If speed is not of the essence,then Economy rate is recommended - at approx. anything from a 1/3rd to 1/2 of the standard US AIR quote/rate - sometimes arriving sooner than the 42 days - but not always. **

UK,8vo HB+dw/dj,1st edn.
Not SIGNED.

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