Trauma and World Literature: Crimes of the Father by Thomas Keneally
StressPoints
In
Crimes of the Father, Thomas Keneally, a former seminarian and author of Booker Prize-winning
Shindler’s List, takes on the history of widespread sexual abuse in the Catholic Church as it began to be revealed in the 1990s. In Keneally’s 2016 novel, as in Pat Barker’s
Regeneration Trilogy about World War I, trauma and its effects are shown from many perspectives, including that of the mental health professionals of the time.