One of Australia's most-celebrated authors has decided to give away $50,000 in prize money instead of spending the cash on "incontinence pads".
Thomas Keneally turned 87 this month and has enjoyed a decorated writing career as the author of Schindler's Ark — the book adapted to Steven Spielberg's film Schindler's List — along with many other award-winning novels.
On Thursday, Mr Keneally won the ARA Historical Novel Prize for his new book, Corporal Hitler's Pistol.
He immediately announced he would share the $50,000 prize with the runners-up.
"I wanted to look after some of the other writers on the longlist," Mr Keneally told ABC Radio, "because writing — for young and old — is often a matter of combining pittances to make a living."
Mr Keneally told ABC Radio he didn't want to keep the money for himself and have it go towards paying for the perils of old age.
"Other oldies have to have incontinence pads," he said.
Mr Keneally plans to give $4,000 to each of the six authors on the longlist for the ARA prize.
He said that receiving the award was confirmation that people believed he was "still a novelist".
"Writing a novel at 87 is exactly the same process as writing at the age of 25," he said, "but we need to win a prize occasionally so we can maintain the delusion that we're a novelist."
Mr Keneally has won — and been shortlisted for — countless literary awards over his career, including winning the Man Booker Prize in 1982 and the Miles Franklin Award in 1967.
Corporal Hitler's Pistol is a work of historical fiction, set in Mr Keneally's home town of Kempsey, on the Mid North Coast of New South Wales.
"There used to be a story around Kempsey, when I was young, that there was a farmer at Polo Flats, who had held Hitler prisoner," he said.
"He had taken the pistol from him — Corporal Hitler's pistol — and had brought it back to the Macleay Valley, where it rested a number of years in a tie drawer."
The book is set in 1933 and explores the impacts of the traumas of the interwar period on rural Australian communities.
"The book is also about a gay cinema pianist who actually existed," Mr Keneally said.
"He is a very accomplished piano man — as those bush piano men were — but he is also a chicken hypnotist."
