A flawed man who finds himself at a momentous turn of history is at the heart of "Schindler's List" (1993), says the author of the book that inspired the Oscar-winning film about a Holocaust hero.

"All my novels are about either weak men or flawed men, about men with faults who are faced with extraordinary events like Oskar Schindler in the Holocaust," said Thomas Keneally, one of Australia's most successful writers, playwrights and authors of nonfiction. He has written more than 30 novels in his prolific career.

Opportunistic German industrialist Oskar Schindler is credited with saving the lives of hundreds of Jews employed at his munitions and enamelware factories in Poland. Otherwise, they would have been sent to Nazi death camps.

"I always tend to put human beings who are not perfect in a situation where history is occurring and they are under great pressure, and then see how they behave," he told Shanghai Daily in an interview at the recent Shanghai International Literary Festival where he spoke.

Keneally's "Schindler's Ark" won the Booker Prize in 1982, and was made into the 1993-film by Steven Spielberg; then it was republished "Schindler's List."

Schindler originally hired Jews as cheap labor but later went to great altruistic lengths to shield and help them. Good deeds sprang from an unlikely source.

It was Schindler's imperfections that attracted him to the character, said Keneally, adding that it was too bad the film left out some of his less-than-admirable aspects in making him a hero.

"There are just things you can fit into a book that cannot be fit into a film," he said.

He cited Schindler's black market business, his work for German military intelligence and membership in the Nazi party - all elements that would have fleshed out the character and made his encounter with the Holocaust all the more contradictory and compelling.

The expansive affable author finds flawed human beings who do remarkable things far more interesting than perfect people who do the same because of "contradictions" involving would seem to be their self-interest. Of course, he is hardly alone among authors who explore contradictions and tugs of conscience.

Inspiration

Keneally got the idea for the book on the way home to Australia from an Italian film festival. He detoured to America and stopped in Beverly Hill where he bought a briefcase from a man, Poldek Pfefferberg, a Schindler survivor who ran a luggage store. When he learned Keneally was a writer, he told him how Schindler saved him and other Jews.

Keneally studied to be a Catholic priest before he left seminary - he found contradictions there, he said - and decided to become a writer.

At the International Literary Festival he spoke with Shanghai Daily about his work, his fascination with convicts (who appear in many novels) and, of course, Schindler.

Keneally is one of 10 Australian authors whose works have been translated into Chinese in a series project of the Shanghai Translation Publishing House. Keneally's "Three Cheers for the Paraclete" (1968), which won the Miles Franklin Award, was translated and published just before the literary festival.

The 75-year-old writer, who lives in Sydney, said he wanted very much to read more contemporary literature by Chinese mainland writers. Much of what he has read comes from ethnic Chinese who have grown up in the West.

"They write fascinating books, but I would love to read more contemporary literature about how people really live in the suburbs or small towns," he said.

He was making his third visit to China, the first was in 1980 and the second in 2005. This time he gave talks at universities in Shanghai and Nanjing in Jiangsu Province.

"Schindler's" author said he was fascinated by stories of Japanese occupation of China and the selfless work of heroes, including German businessman John Rabe who saved hundreds of Chinese from the Nanjing Massacre. Rabe's heroics was made into the film "John Rabe" (2009) and he has been called "China's Schindler" for his work organizing a safety zone for Chinese.

When he visited China for the first time in 1980, Keneally planned to make a movie about miners from southern China lured to Australia in the mid-19th century during the gold rush. The film was never made but the project remains a work in progress.

Seminary days

Keneally traces his fascination with contradictions back to his days at seminary, shortly before writing "Three Cheers for the Paraclete," based on the story of priest from his seminary.

He said that he was puzzled by aspects of the seminary where "people pretended to love other human beings in a religious way, when they didn't, and when they were vain and egotistic."

"When I left the seminary, I began to get an appetite that most writers have - for contradictions in characters. We all want to live with virtuous, reliable and non-contradictory people in real life, but in novels, people like to read about figures who have yawning contradictions," he recalled.

He has been looking for imperfect people to write about ever since, and he's had a lot to choose from, especially among convicts. During the late 18th and 19th centuries a great number of convicts were transported to various Australian penal colonies by the British government.

"There were so many convicts, peasant and political ones, in the history of Australia, and many of these prisoners led extremely exciting and interesting lives, which we don't know a lot about," he said.

"This probably explains why I always have prisoners in my books."

The financial success of "Schindler's Ark/List" enabled Keneally to research and write the nonfiction opus titled "The Great Shame" about convicts in Australia.

These prisoners included his granduncle, a political prisoner, and two great grandfather of his wife, peasant convicts.

To research and summarize their lives, Keneally wrote a non-fiction titled "The Great Shame" (1998).

The book also includes a historic figure surnamed Meagher, an Irish nationalist and rebel who was sentenced to death but sent to Tasmania.

He escaped, went to New York, studied law, worked as a journalist and enlisted in the Union Army where he rose to the rank of brigadier general and commanded an Irish brigade. He was also a friend of President Abraham Lincoln.

Keneally was in the process of researching the general, little known in Australia, when Viking Press invited him to join a project in which novelists around the world would write about famous Americans. Keneally decided to write about Lincoln. His biography, published in 2003, was given by then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to President Barack Obama.

Most novels are set in Australia. "The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith" (1972) describes a half-Aboriginal man (with an Aboriginal mother and white father) who struggles and rages because of persecution, and finally snaps.

It was nominated for the Booker Prize and nominated for the Palm' d'Or at the 1978 Cannes Film Festival.

In 1983 Keneally was made an Officer of the Order of Australia and is considered an Australian Living Treasure.

"When I first started writing, I thought I could change the world through my writings. I thought the world out there needed my writings," he told the literary festival audience, in an ironic tone.

"Of course, nothing changed and I realized I was the one who needed my writings. Now as an old man at 75, I'm just glad I'm still writing."