Confederates is a novel by the Australian author Thomas Keneally

Thomas Keneally

Thomas Michael Keneally, AO is an Australian novelist, playwright and author of non-fiction. He is best known for writing Schindler's Ark, the Booker Prize-winning novel of 1982 which was inspired by the efforts of Poldek Pfefferberg, a Holocaust survivor...

 which uses the American Civil War

American Civil War

The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...

 as its main subject matter.

Confederates "uses the United States Civil War as a setting for a more personal conflict between neighbors. In the midst of the war's climactic battle -- Antietam -- another conflict is underway. Ephie Bumpass' husband Usaph and Ephie's lover Decatur Cate are thrown together to fight in the Shenandoah Volunteers. Cate's emasculating injury in the battle is a symbolic punishment for his sin.

Awards and nominations

• Man Booker Prize
  Man Booker Prize
  The Man Booker Prize for Fiction is a literary prize awarded each year for the best original full-length novel, written in the English language, by a citizen of the Commonwealth of Nations, Ireland, or Zimbabwe. The winner of the Man Booker Prize is generally assured of international renown and...
  
  : shortlisted 1979

External links

• "The Sites of War in the Fiction of Thomas Keneally" by Peter Pierce, Australian Literary Studies vol.12 no.4 October 1986 (pp.442-452)